If only we get that big raise, or new house or have children we will finally be happy. But we won’t. In fact in many ways achieving all your goals provides the opposite of fulfillment: it lays bare the truth that there is nothing you can purchase, possess or achieve that will make you feel fulfilled over the long term....

Americans are depressed and suicidal because something is wrong with our culture

On average, there are 123 suicides per day in the United States. If you or someone you know needs help, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline --- 1-800-273-TALK

 

Don't pathologize the despair that is a rational response to a culture that values people based on ever escalating financial and personal achievements.

KATE SPADE - DEATH BY SUICIDE

by Kirsten Powers

In September of 2004, I received the call that every person dreads: my father had dropped dead of a heart attack at the age of 61. It came at a time I was already grappling with other issues, including watching my mother fight breast cancer for the preceding six months, a breakup with a boyfriend and a lack of structure in my life as I was freelancing as a consultant while I tried to determine what I wanted to do next with my career.

I was in an emotional free-fall, so I visited a psychiatrist. He said the antidepressant my general practitioner prescribed to help with my life-long struggle with anxiety wasn't what I needed, so he prescribed a new one. This seemed to only make things worse. Within a few days, I found myself thinking the unthinkable: I want to die. 

I couldn’t imagine a life without my father and our hours-long conversations about, well, everything. The pain was debilitating, getting out of bed was an Olympian event, and life was utterly devoid of meaning. I stopped eating and shed 15 pounds in a month. I couldn’t see any reason to be alive.

I’ve thought a lot about this period following the suicides of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, two people who by public appearances seemed to be living their best lives. We also learned this week that suicide rates increased 25% nationally, making it a national crisis. 

I decided to share my story after interviewing John Draper, director of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, who happens to be my future brother-in-law. “What people don’t really know is that there is research that shows the media can reduce suicide,” Draper told me. “What creates a contagion effect is when the media focus mostly on the suicide and the way the person killed themselves. If people are more open about talking about coping through suicidal experiences, and the media highlight those stories, the evidence is very clear that this has a very positive effect on getting people through a suicidal crisis.” 

So it might help a person contemplating suicide to read that I am thankful I didn’t succumb to my suicidal impulses. Or to learn that people like Halle Barry, Elton John and Drew Barrymore attempted and survived suicide. Or that Oprah, Olympian Michael Phelps and singer Demi Lovato considered suicide but didn’t go through with it.

Many factors in suicide

We often assume that people who commit suicide are mentally ill, but this isn’t always the case. There are many factors that can contribute to suicide that have nothing to do with mental illness, including loss of a relationship, loneliness, chronic illness, financial loss, history of trauma or abuse and the stigma associated with asking for help.

Even for those who do ask for help, friends and family can be flummoxed by “successful people” planning their own deaths. My family and friends told me I was “living the dream” and that I was “too strong” to succumb to suicide. Even my psychiatrist didn’t take my complaints seriously, saying I didn’t present as a suicidal person who was more likely to show up disheveled and unbathed than with a blowout and a fresh manicure.

Never mind that the day before, I had stood pressed against the 20th floor bathroom window of a building where I was consulting for a campaign, sobbing and wishing I could open it and jump to my death. Or that a few days before that, I had turned on the oven and put my head in, pulling it out only when an image of my younger brothers, also grieving my father’s sudden death, flashed in my mind.

Despite my doctor’s claim that nothing was wrong, I insisted that he change my anti-depressant, and within a few weeks my suicidal thoughts diminished. I’ll never know if the anti-depressant was the cause of my suicidal thoughts or not. What I do know is that every day I didn’t kill myself felt like a victory.

Though my suicidal thoughts passed, an oppressive depression ground me down that year. Life was an agonizing and daily struggle. So, when I hear that Kate Spade was reportedly fighting depression and anxiety for five years, all I can think is that it was nothing short of heroic for her to stay alive as long as she did.

Why we suffer emotional despair

“What a lot of people don’t understand is that a person contemplating suicide is in overwhelming emotional pain and they think very differently than people who are rational,” Draper told me. “It’s cognitive constriction. Your pre-frontal cortex goes off line and you have a flight, fight or freeze impulse. In that case suicide seems like the best way out or the best way to fight for your survival. They think, maybe my afterlife will be better.”

But why are so many more Americans getting to this level of emotional despair than in the past? As journalist Johann Hari wrote in his best-selling book Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression — and the Unexpected Solutions, the epidemic of depression and despair in the Western World isn’t always caused by our brains. It’s largely caused by key problems in the way we live.

We exist largely disconnected from our extended families, friends and communities — except in the shallow interactions of social media — because we are too busy trying to “make it” without realizing that once we reach that goal, it won’t be enough. 

In an interview this year, the comedian and actor Jim Carrey talked about “getting to the place where you have everything everybody has ever desired and realizing you are still unhappy. And that you can still be unhappy is a shock when you have accomplished everything you ever dreamt of and more….”

If only we get that big raise, or new house or have children we will finally be happy. But we won’t. In fact, as Carrey points out, in many ways achieving all your goals provides the opposite of fulfillment: it lays bare the truth that there is nothing you can purchase, possess or achieve that will make you feel fulfilled over the long term.

Rather than pathologizing the despair and emotional suffering that is a rational response to a culture that values people based on ever escalating financial and personal achievements, we should acknowledge that something is very wrong. We should stop telling people who yearn for a deeper meaning in life that they have an illness or need therapy. Instead, we need to help people craft lives that are more meaningful and built on a firmer foundation than personal success.

Yes, there are people who have chemical imbalances who should be supported and treated with medicine. But most Americans are depressed, anxious or suicidal because something is wrong with our culture, not because something is wrong with them.

Changing our culture is critical. Being honest with others about our own personal struggles and dark nights of the soul is the first step. People on the edge need to hear stories that assure them there is a way through the all-consuming pain to a meaningful life.  

I’ve told mine, now go tell yours. 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/06/09/kate-spade-suicide-anthony-bourdain-depression-culture-success-column/687388002/

We found childhood sexual abuse to occur across the spectrum of Jewish religious affiliation, yet there was three times as much prevalence among formerly Orthodox individuals. That suggests that those who went through a childhood sexual abuse experience while Orthodox find it harder to relate to religion later in life.

David Rosmarin: studying sexual abuse and religion

David H. Rosmarin

David H. Rosmarin is an assistant professor in the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the founder and director of the Center for Anxiety in New York. He is a board-certified psychologist, clinical innovator and prolific researcher who has authored over 50 peer-reviewed articles, focused on spirituality and mental health. He is also the author of Spirituality, Religion, and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy: A Guide for Clinicians.

Rosmarin recently published a research study on sexual abuse in the Jewish community in the journal Child Abuse and Neglect. He spoke with The CJN about his findings.

What prompted your interest in a study on religiosity and sexual abuse?

I have been doing research for the last 10 to 15 years on spirituality and mental health. That’s my area of study. Sexual abuse has been a subject that I’ve avoided, as it’s very political and charged. It hasn’t been a subject I wanted to get involved in, because I really saw it as not relevant to my program of research, until I realized that in certain groups, it can have relevance to both spirituality and mental health. Most of all, I had several patients who had experiences with sexual abuse and I found that spirituality played an important role.

How did you go about the study?

Sexuality is a very sensitive subject, especially among more religious Jews, so we had to be very careful how we did the study. The main purpose of the study was not to focus on sexual abuse. Back in 2013, we launched the Harvard Medical School Study on Judaism and Mental Health, to assess for various facets of Jewish spiritual/religious life and emotional wellbeing/distress over a three-year period with nearly 500 Jewish individuals from the United States and Canada. We recruited participants with the help of pretty much every major organization in the Jewish world – from both ultra and centrist Orthodoxy, to the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, to the Union of Reform Judaism and specialty organizations which help individuals who convert to and from Orthodoxy. Then, we only asked participants about sexual abuse after they were in the study for two full years. As such, we had the trust of these people who gave us their information, and they weren’t recruited for the particular subject of sexual abuse. So, we think our findings are valuable.

Does religious association or observance get affected by sexual abuse incidents?

We found childhood sexual abuse to occur across the spectrum of Jewish religious affiliation, yet there was three times as much prevalence among formerly Orthodox individuals. That suggests that those who went through a childhood sexual abuse experience while Orthodox find it harder to relate to religion later in life. Interestingly, we also found that across the board – for Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews, irrespective of how they were raised – individuals with a history of childhood sexual abuse had lower levels of religious belief, practice and value. In other words, our findings suggest that going through childhood sexual abuse may make it harder for someone to relate to religion.

Yet, your study seems to indicate that religion does act as a buffer against the effects of sexual abuse?

Correct. Despite lower prevalence of religion among abuse victims, we still found that religious engagement – higher levels of belief and practice – were negatively correlated with emotional distress and lower odds of having a psychiatric diagnosis.

Does that seem to be a paradox in terms of religion and sexual abuse?

Not really. The two main findings of the study are that: 1) history of childhood sexual abuse was associated with greater risk for psychiatric distress and less religious involvement, however; 2) spiritual/religious engagement and belief seem to act as a buffer and facilitate resilience in the context of abuse. What this suggests is that sexual abuse may alienate victims from spiritual tools that could help them to heal. It’s more of a tragedy than a paradox.

  

Is spirituality and religion being integrated into sexual abuse treatment?

Slowly, this is becoming the norm, but there is an old guard within the field of psychotherapy that views spirituality as pathological and irrelevant to mental health. Quite frankly, that camp is wrong and such an approach can cause damage to patients. If our findings tell us one thing, it’s that clinicians need to be able to address both the positive and negative aspects of spirituality with their patients. If we ignore it, or pathologize it, we are doing many people a disservice.

What are the take aways from the study?

We found that 16.1 per cent of males and 25.4 per cent of females had at least one incident of inappropriate genital contact as a child. Those are staggering numbers that are on par with what research has found in the general population. And to clarify, the prevalence of sexual abuse in our study was the same among individuals who were raised Orthodox and remain Orthodox, individuals who were raised non-Orthodox and are now Orthodox and individuals who have never been Orthodox. However, those who were raised Orthodox and no longer affiliate with Orthodoxy had much higher levels of abuse. Further, as we’ve discussed, it seems that spirituality can be negatively impacted by the experience of sexual abuse, yet it remains an important resource for a lot of people who have abuse history.

So, I guess the most important take away is that sexual abuse is unfortunately quite common and can have a lot of negative effects, so it our duty to address this issue.

http://www.cjnews.com/perspectives/features/david-rosmarin-studying-sexual-abuse-and-religion

READ: CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE IN COMMUNITY RAMPANT, AUDIENCE TOLD

“Minors must be protected, and we applaud the attempt of the sponsors to protect children and underage girls from very unfortunate situations,” Schnall said. “A 17-year-old girl shouldn’t be getting married by herself, on her own. Take her before a judge. We have confidence that the judge will make the right decision.”

 All of a sudden --- Agudath Israel is "confident" a (secular) judge is going to make the right decision for underage Jewish kids!

 

Why New Jersey’s Haredi Orthodox stalled a bill banning child marriages

A New Jersey bill seeks to outlaw marriage for teenagers under 18

(JTA) — A bill that would ban teenagers under 18 from marrying in New Jersey has been stalled because of opposition from the state’s haredi Orthodox community.

Agudath Israel of America, the national haredi organization, says it supports the bill but that its provisions are too strict. Citing child marriages that take place in observant Jewish communities, it wants to see an exemption made for older teenagers who want to wed.

“[Saying] any marriage under the age of 18 is illegal seems a bit extreme,” said Rabbi Avi Schnall, Agudah’s New Jersey director. “It’s a cultural thing, mostly in the Sephardic community. Culturally they tend to get married younger. It’s not a biblical obligation — most of our girls don’t get married under 18 — it’s a cultural thing. It’s part of their heritage.”

Jewish activists are driving both sides of the debate. The main group lobbying for the bill is Unchained at Last, a nonprofit that opposes underage marriage. The group’s founder, Fraidy Reiss, who grew up haredi, says child marriage, primarily of girls to older men, is an abusive practice that can damage children emotionally and physically.

“Marriage before 18 can so easily be a forced marriage or it can turn into a forced marriage,” Reiss told JTA. “You’re subjecting this girl to a human rights abuse. It destroys girls’ health, their education, their economic opportunities. It significantly increases the risk that they’ll be beaten by their spouse. It literally destroys girls’ lives.”

Under current New Jersey law, 16- and 17-year-olds are allowed to marry with parental consent, and children 15 and younger are allowed to marry with permission of a judge. The bill would outlaw both of those practices.

If the bill passes, it would make New Jersey only the second state in the country to ban child marriage. Delaware banned the practice earlier this year.

A majority of the General Assembly, the state legislature’s lower house, is backing the measure. A similar bill passed both houses of the state legislature last year, but then-Gov. Chris Christie required that the bill include the amendment Agudah is seeking, which would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to wed with the permission of their parents and a judge.

“Minors must be protected, and we applaud the attempt of the sponsors to protect children and underage girls from very unfortunate situations,” Schnall said. “A 17-year-old girl shouldn’t be getting married by herself, on her own. Take her before a judge. We have confidence that the judge will make the right decision.”

AVI SCHNALL AWARDEE -  XXL

But the sponsors of the bill disagree and have reintroduced their measure with Phil Murphy, a Democrat, succeeding Christie as governor. The current bill was set to come to a vote last week, but was removed from the agenda after Assemblyman Gary Schaer, who has spoken with Agudah on the issue, raised concerns. Schaer, who is Orthodox, has said he opposes the bill because of Agudah’s objections.

Speaking to JTA, Schaer avoided discussing religion, and said he just believes the bill is too absolute.

To illustrate his qualms, he spoke of a hypothetical example of a 17-year-old girl who is pregnant but cannot marry the baby’s father because of the law.

“To have a situation where we’re creating an absolute — if you’re 18 you can get married, if you’re under 18 you can’t — that to me is a problem,” he said. “There needs to be some room for maneuvering, for the reality of the human condition.”

Despite Schaer’s opposition, the bill is expected to pass the Assembly vote this week, and once it clears both houses, Murphy is expected to sign the legislation. The lead sponsor, Assemblywoman Nancy Munoz, noted that of more than 3,000 minors married in New Jersey between 1995 and 2015, 95 percent were 16 or 17. So creating an exemption for those ages, she said, would make the bill pointless.

Munoz, a nurse by profession, told JTA that guarding the rights of children is a focus of hers as a legislator. She said religious concerns should not trump protections afforded by secular law.

“We’re doing the bill so there won’t be exceptions to it,” she said. “Much of my legislation has to do with protecting the people from abuse and put them in a safe situation. We don’t allow 16-year-olds to drive a car. We don’t allow 17-year-olds to vote. The age of majority in New Jersey is 18.”

Reiss, who attended a haredi Orthodox high school, remembers attending parties for classmates who married while still in school. She says entering a marriage as a child is a situation fraught with danger, as children are not allowed to leave home, enter into their own contracts or retain an attorney.

She said it’s unclear if a child is allowed to file for divorce in New Jersey. She also noted that the State Department considers child marriage to be gender discrimination and a human rights issue.
Given how vulnerable children are, Reiss said, it would be wrong to make child marriage subject to the review of a judge — no matter the child’s age.

“We know the judicial review process is not protecting children,” she said. “We’re going to apply that flawed process to the 95 percent of children affected by the exemption? It’s like banning age discrimination practices, except for job candidates over age 50.”

https://www.jta.org/2018/06/04/news-opinion/new-jerseys-orthodox-want-change-bill-banning-child-marriages?utm_source=JTA%20Maropost&utm_campaign=JTA&utm_medium=email&mpweb=1161-4595-21723

Satmar Rebbe laments: My followers celebrate Israel's success ---- During massive rally in New York, leader of anti-Zionist Satmar hassidic movement slams followers for 'rejoicing over Zionist success.'

Thousands of Satmar Hassidim gathered in Nassau Coliseum Sunday evening for a rally led by Satmar Rebbe Aharon Teitelbaum.

The staunchly anti-Zionist Satmar movement, one of the largest Hassidic movements in the world, has been split for more than a decade between the “Williamsburg Faction”, led by Rabbi Zalman Teitelbaum, and the “Kiryas Joel Faction”, headed by Zalman,’s older brother Rabbi Aharon Teitelbaum.

On Sunday, some 15,000 Satmar Hassidim and other supporters of the movement gathered in Long Island for an event hosted by Rabbi Aharon Teitelbaum and featuring Rabbi Moshe Sternbuch, a senior member of the anti-Zionist Edah Haharedit organization in Israel.

During the keynote address, Rabbi Teitelbaum lashed out at his own followers, charging them with implicitly supporting the State of Israel and Zionism by expressing satisfaction with recent ‘Zionist successes’.

“In recent years, Satmar Hassidim have expressed happiness with the successes of Zionism, Heaven help us,” said Rabbi Teitelbaum, according to Kikar Hashabbat.

“Anyone who joins in celebrating the successes of the Zionists will not merit to celebrate the coming of the Messiah,” he continued, citing a teaching of the first Satmar Rebbe, Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum.

Rabbi Aharon Teitelbaum also warned of what he claimed was the impending draft en masse of haredi yeshiva students into the IDF, should the Knesset fail to pass a new draft law, replacing amendments to the existing law struck down by the Supreme Court in 2017.

“The terrible decree is hovering over every yeshiva student this September, when the Supreme Court ruling goes into effect, meaning that 50,000 haredi men will be drafted into the IDF.”

“I’m really worried that the [haredi] Knesset members will compromise on this, and if they do compromise on this we’ll be forced once again to team up with other communities to fight against this terrible decree.”

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/246987?utm_source=activetrail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

Agudath Israel - “We have always explained that our concern was for the viability of yeshivas and shuls and summer camps,” He’s warbling a tune that we’re sick and tired of. Woe are them! Woe is us. “Child sexual abuse is so pervasive in this community that eliminating the SOL would financially bankrupt its religious institutions.

Zwiebel said that the organization still opposes a broad opening of the statute of limitations for civil cases. “We have always explained that our concern was for the viability of yeshivas and shuls and summer camps,” Zwiebel said. “We have said that to open up old claims in situations where it could even be that the administration has turned over five times since the incident has occurred… we’re opposed to that.”Read more: https://forward.com/news/362747/has-ultra-orthodox-group-agudath-israel-changed-its-tune-on-sex-abuse-lawsu/

Zwiebel said that the organization still opposes a broad opening of the statute of limitations for civil cases. “We have always explained that our concern was for the viability of yeshivas and shuls and summer camps,” Zwiebel said. “We have said that to open up old claims in situations where it could even be that the administration has turned over five times since the incident has occurred… we’re opposed to that.”Read more: https://forward.com/news/362747/has-ultra-orthodox-group-agudath-israel-changed-its-tune-on-sex-abuse-lawsu/

Zwiebel said that the organization still opposes a broad opening of the statute of limitations for civil cases. “We have always explained that our concern was for the viability of yeshivas and shuls and summer camps,” Zwiebel said. “We have said that to open up old claims in situations where it could even be that the administration has turned over five times since the incident has occurred… we’re opposed to that.”

According to its 2011 statement, Agudah’s ancillary concern is the financial trauma that schools and synagogues would suffer in the event of successful lawsuits brought against sexual predators and the institutions that tolerate them. As Rabbi Shafran wrote, “What Agudath Israel and Torah Umesorah [an Orthodox Jewish organization promoting Torah-based religious studies] must object to… is legislation that could literally destroy schools and houses of worship… Legislation that would do away with the statute of limitations completely, even if only for a one-year period, could subject schools and other vital institutions to ancient claims and capricious litigation, and place their existence in severe jeopardy.”

(Agudath Israel), Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, the Sultans of Self-Pity - Grifters gonna grift for their own self-preservation - Victims be damned!

 

• 

Former President Bill Clinton during an interview on Sunday

Move over, Alec Baldwin. Bill Clinton does a much better impersonation of Donald Trump.

The hair is wrong but the air is right — self-righteous, self-pitying and suffused with anger that anyone would peddle a version of events less heroic than the one that he prefers. We’re shaming him about ancient groping when we should be showering him with eternal gratitude. And what about his pain?

“I left the White House $16 million in debt,” Clinton said in an interview that NBC’s “Today” aired on Monday, batting back questions about whether he had demonstrated sufficient contrition for converting a 22-year-old’s romantic idolization of him into sexual favors and setting off a sequence of events that savaged her. I don’t know what legal bills have to do with a moral ledger. But I can see that his fixations on money and martyrdom are intact.

Before cries of “false equivalence” shatter windows and startle forest creatures, I should make clear that I’d take Clinton over Trump in any role on any day. Trump is the Everest of delusion and depravity; Clinton ascended only a bit beyond base camp.

But at an honor-starved moment when most of our politicians are quicker to shirk responsibility than to shoulder it, I cringe at his evasions, elisions and rationalizations. Is he taking a cue from Trump or showing us where Trump got some of his moves and inspiration?

Granted, Clinton is venturing in front of cameras this week to discuss a book he wrote, not the book on him. So he’s frustrated and flustered.

And at 71, he’s not the talker or the actor that he used to be. Those eyes don’t mist as wetly. That lower lip isn’t as ripe for penitential chewing.

But hasn’t he or anyone around him, in response to the #MeToo movement, thought to prepare a script in which he says something brave and healing about his own mistakes, the lessons he learned and how all of us can apply and benefit from them?

He’s correct that he has gone through the motions of saying that he’s sorry for the Monica Lewinsky scandal before. But that preceded the fall of Harvey Weinstein, the recognition of sexual misconduct’s pervasiveness and the damning circus of Trump, whose allergy to apology gives Clinton a chance to model a more generous, better way. He sure as hell isn’t seizing it.

He grows visibly annoyed when journalists are so petty as to bring up the past and the pesky fact that he’s one of only two American presidents ever impeached. He raged when Craig Melvin of NBC News breached this territory. And he promptly turned into Trump.

He pointed fingers elsewhere, excusing his own erotic exploits by insinuating that his Oval Office forebears were no less randy. “Do you think President Kennedy should have resigned?” he challenged Melvin. “Do you believe President Johnson should have resigned?” Give Clinton a break. He was merely playing follow the libido.

He cited polls, outsourcing discernment and judgment to the crowds. “Two-thirds of the American people sided with me,” he told Melvin. They thought that Republicans’ impeachment of him went too far. But that doesn’t mean that he’s innocent — or virtuous.

He accused Melvin of sloppy journalism, though there wasn’t a scintilla of sloppiness in the portion of the interview that “Today” shared. “You, typically, have ignored gaping facts,” he said. I myself gaped — at the Trumpian magnitude of Clinton’s ire.

Those ignored facts were the most ignoble part of his rant. He mentioned how many women he had put in top jobs, presenting the roll call as a counterweight to — or absolution for? — the infidelities, the accusations of sexual harassment and Juanita Broaddrick’s claim of rape. Does Madeleine Albright’s ascent redeem Monica Lewinsky’s evisceration? Was Janet Reno a get-out-of-jail-free card?

What a queasy-making calculus. And what foreshadowing. Decades before many of Trump’s enablers edited out huge chunks of his behavior to rally around his policies, many of Clinton’s fans made a similar if less egregious bargain.

The Venn diagram of the 42nd and 45th presidents overlaps not only where hormones rage but also where entitlement roars. And that entitlement is antithetical to a world in which women get the respect and equality that they deserve and Americans get the leadership that we sorely need.

Clinton’s new book, a thriller written with James Patterson, is called “The President Is Missing.” That could also be a title for his book tour — and for a real-time chronicle of the Trump administration. If the president is supposed to be someone more focused on his obligations than on his reputation, on his duty than on his due, then we lack one now, and Clinton isn’t filling the void.

He’s warbling a tune that we’re sick and tired of. Woe is him. Woe is Trump.

I’d tweak the lyrics. Woe is us.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/05/opinion/bill-clinton-trump-sexual-harassment.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

Neighbors Face Off With A New Orthodox School In Kensington As Boro Park Bursts At The Seams...

 MONEY QUOTE: "I know the truth about Satmar politics and everything around, one thing you can see that that its a big Chilul Hashem and Zalman better pray to god to forgive him on everything he has done to his older brother Aron, especially not letting him in to visit his own father in his late years, and not letting him to attend  his grandchildren weddings."

SATMAR

The school also has no website, and no information about how many children attend it (a question that remained unanswered at the meeting). There is no calendar of events posted or available anywhere, and permits and licenses to operate events and have liquor were not available to be provided to the community. Many residents complained there were parties every night and parking was nonexistent because of so many people driving in for events.

No promises were made on when the permits will be made available, frustrating many neighbors.

Vehicles park on the sidewalks at all times of day, and a neighbor questioned if  using yellow school busses to make deliveries to the school was kosher.

KENSINGTON/BORO PARK – Last Thursday night about 40 residents finally gathered at a meeting with the Clara Street School that they had been asking for for 9 months, hoping to address issues of idling school buses, garbage, noisy generators, and constant evening events at the school.

The clash is the latest in an escalating series of battles between the booming Orthodox community and their neighbors over community institutions that have been springing up at the edges of Boro Park.

The school at the center of the latest fight is the United Talmudical Academy at 123 Clara Street – a religious school for orthodox Jewish boys. It has been in the works since 2002, when it secured a variance to build above 4 stories, but work did not began until 2013, due to funding difficulties, YIMBY reported at the time:

“The five-story structure will feature a synagogue on the first floor, a mix of offices and classrooms on the upper stories, and a play area and ‘multipurpose room’ on the top floor. There will also be a kitchen and dining room in the cellar and roof decks on the fourth and fifth floors. The main part of the building will have five stories, but a sixth, partially setback floor will add extra recreational and roof space.”

The school finally opened last fall, immediately bringing forth a number of issues, that even though they were brought to the attention of Community Board 12 monthly, were never addressed by the school or the board, including failing to meet with the residents for months....

 MUCH MORE:
http://bklyner.com/a-heated-meeting-with-united-talmudical-academy-of-boro-park-about-permits-garbage-busses-parking/?utm_source=BKLYNER+DAILY&utm_campaign=4e7aebfe6e-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_cefeb1bc9c-4e7aebfe6e-64227457

Please Excuse My Cyber-Pal Dov Fischer As He is Having a Cyber-Fit. Dov - Why is it That You Never Mention Once - קבלת עול מצות "Kabbalat Ol Mitzvas" as The Pre-Dominant Criteria For an Orthodox Conversion!? Not Even Once! WHY? (I SUGGEST YOU LOOK INWARDS AT THE FRAUDSTERS IN YOUR OWN GROUP OF BUDDIES RIGHT HERE IN THE USA & IN YOUR BACKYARD)

The never-ending saga of unrecognized American conversions...

 

Why blame the Israeli Rabbinate for not recognizing American “Conversions” that American Orthodox Rabbis also do not recognize? (Yes Dov, tell us!)

Contact Editor at www.rabbidov.com

Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer

There now seems to have arisen the latest recurring chapter in the never-ending saga of situations where radical-left rabbis in America expect and demand that the Israeli Chief Rabbinate recognize them and their “conversions” as valid Orthodox conversions. 

In the newest tweak, a letter has been produced by which the Rabbinate did not recognize a conversion authenticated by a Rabbi Akiva Herzfeld.  For some in the left-wing media, this is a new cause celebre: Wow!  The Israeli Chief Rabbinate will not recognize conversions by Akiva Herzfeld, who graduated from an “Open Orthodox” seminary!

But this is no news story worth the ink. This is no scandal.  Because few, if any, normative mainstream Orthodox rabbis in the United States would recognize any “conversion” conducted by that rabbi, nor would his written attestations make the slightest difference to us.  If a man walked into my Young Israel shul at a service where there are nine men at the prayers, one short of a minyan (quorun) for reciting Kaddish (a memorial prayer recited for a deceased loved one), and it were my Dad’s soul for whom Kaddish needed to be recited that day, I still would not recite that Kaddish prayer if that tenth man were to tell me that he had been “converted” to Judaism by that rabbi.  Because that still would leave me with nine Jewish men in the room, plus a very sweet guy who is not Jewish.

Time and again these columns have warned the Jewish public and particularly the universe of non-Jews contemplating conversion to Judaism  — in Israel, in America — that the normative mainstream American Orthodox rabbinate, no less than the Israeli Chief Rabbinate, does not recognize the validity of “conversions” conducted by people of certain theological distortions.  It does not matter that some rabbi says “But I am a rabbi!  I have ordination!  Here, look at my certificate!”

Just this past week, a handful of new Reform rabbis were ordained in California.  At their ordination, the keynote speaker not only attacked Jews in general and Israel in particular — and was known to the rabbinical institution for his long and nasty history of attacking Israel — but he even further attacked the Judaic theological primacy of endogamy: that a Jew must marry a Jew.  Instead, he advocated — at a rabbinical ordination program — intermarriage of Jews with non-Jews.


There are American rabbis who hate Judaic rituals like mikvah.  There are American rabbis who are world leaders in convincing non-Jews throughout Europe and on American campuses to boycott Israel, to persuade their universities and companies to divest shares of corporations who do business with Israel, even to sanction Israel.


So when a Reform rabbi comes to Israel and says “I am a rabbi,” that does not automatically mean that Israel should be rolling out the red carpet at the Kotel (Western Wall) and giving Judaism’s holiest site over to her or his theological misdirection. There are American rabbis who hate Judaic rituals like mikvah.  There are American rabbis who are world leaders in convincing non-Jews throughout Europe and on American campuses to boycott Israel, to persuade their universities and companies to divest shares of corporations who do business with Israel, even to sanction Israel. Israel rightly even has refused to allow some of the haters in. A rabbi who advocates for BDS against Israel indeed should be kept out of Israel — just as America, England, Canada, and other countries bar certain noxious public nuisances from entering within their borders.

Chovevei Torah began as a fascinating experiment.  Many thought it would become an Orthodox flagship seminary of “Modern Orthodoxy.”  Then again, a century earlier, many of the earliest founders of the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) were Orthodox rabbinic leaders who mistakenly thought JTS would become the Orthodox flagship seminary of “Modern Orthodoxy.”  Somehow, JTS became the seminary of “Conservative Judaism,” and it now ordains people who are so far removed from the founders’ visions that leading faculty of JTS finally resigned.  Today Conservative Judaism is akin to Reform Judaism, and they both are quite of a similar mindset on virtually all the key hot-button theological issues of the day, with only the last vestiges of differences.  And the history of the past century evidences that Conservative Judaism will adopt any radicalization of Jewish theology within twenty-five years or so of Reform first breaking the standards of Judaism.

Likewise, early in its evolution Chovevei Torah’s founder and theological navigator decided to brand its theology as a new denomination: “Open Orthodoxy.”  It was not the Israeli Chief Rabbinate that called YCT “Open Orthodox.”  It was not the Orthodox Union nor the Rabbinical Council of America nor Agudah. It was they who stepped out of normative mainstream Orthodox Judaism and denominated themselves as a new theological breakaway: “Open Orthodoxy.”  And they now ordain rabbis.

Among their rabbis are rabbis who publish in Jewish publications advocacy for intermarriage with non-Jews.  Should the Israel Chief Rabbinate recognize them or their conversions?  I would not.  I do not.  None of us does.  Nor do I live in a vacuum.  I live embedded in American Orthodox rabbinics.  Such a rabbi’s “conversion attestations” have absolutely no meaning to us.

Others among these YCT-ordained “Open Orthodox” rabbis are married to wives who publicly tell newspaper interviewers that they do not believe in G-d.  Does your shul’s rebbetzin believe in G-d?  Would any normative mainstream Orthodox congregation hire a rabbi whose wife publicly parades that she is an atheist and does not believe there is a G-d Who created the world in six days and rested on the seventh, Who took the Jews out of Egypt and gave us His Torah laws at Sinai?  How good must her chulent recipe be to get her husband hired at a congregation of such ilk?  Would you want her teaching Judaism to your children?

Chovevei Torah ordains rabbis who marry non-Orthodox cantors and rabbis, and some of them even then go off with them to their temples. Chovevei Torah ordains rabbis who publicly attack the kosher food industry in the pages of non-Jewish American publications, evoking noxious images and toxic language that conjure up the worst memories of the battles to save kosher ritual slaughter from anti-Jewish efforts to ban shechitah (kosher slaughter) in the 1950s.

All because a man or a woman is ordained with a piece of paper to be an “Orthodox rabbi” by an “Open Orthodox” ordination seminary — namely Yeshiva Maharat or Chovevei Torah — that does not mean that her or his “conversions” will mean anything theologically to the vast and overwhelming majority of American Orthodox rabbis.

Yeshiva Maharat is the seminary that ordains “Open Orthodox” women rabbis.  Those “Open Orthodox” rabbinical students take some of their classes together with the Chovevei Torah male rabbinical students.  The two “Open Orthodox” rabbi-ordination schools operate out of the same address. Their graduates join “International Rabbinic Fellowship,” the association of “Open Orthodox” male and female rabbis.

The Orthodox Union will not allow the Maharat graduates into any pulpits, notwithstanding their ordination.  The Rabbinical Council of America does not admit anyone whose defining credential is ordination from Chovevei Torah. The National Council of Young Israel does not recognize Chovevei Torah ordination as acceptably qualifying for a Young Israel pulpit. “Open Orthodoxy” is repugnant to actual Orthodoxy.

None of this has anything to do with the Israeli Chief Rabbinate.

In the case of Akiva Herzfeld, surely he is a nice fellow. So are many other people — Jewish and non-Jewish — and “nice” is not the same as “recognized Orthodox rabbi.” His theology speaks for itself, representative of the very reason that normative mainstream Orthodox rabbis in America do not regard “Open Orthodoxy” as a valid expression of Orthodox Judaism (even if they have arrogated the term “Orthodox” for their own purposes).

Here is an Akiva Herzfeld sample, equating two events: (i) the Maccabees’ fight to liberate the Holy Temple (Beit HaMikdash) in Jerusalem from Greek occupation, and (ii) the political movement to recognize homosexual marriage in the state of Maine:

“While the Greeks looked much stronger, the Jews had a powerful weapon on their side: their hearts. . . . The Jews fought for their religious liberty, and this motivated them despite the odds against them. . . . We light Hanukkah candles each year to remember the ancient miracle. . . . This Hanukkah, I celebrate the past and the present. With my very own eyes, I have seen a great miracle this year right here in Maine. A small group of people, homosexuals and their supporters, stood up for their equal rights in marriage. . . . Vast numbers of people stood against them.

"A few years ago, the gay rights supporters were defeated at the polls in Maine, and the sacred ground of their pure hearts was crushed. They continued to fight because they knew that justice was on their side. This year they overcame the odds, and finally won. My conversations with friends in Maine helped convince me of the rightness of the same-sex marriage cause. I signed a letter in support of ‘Yes on 1’ together with other rabbis in the state, including Rabbi Jared Saks of Congregation Bet Ha'am, the Reform temple in South Portland, and Conservative Rabbi Rachel Isaacs of Beth Israel Congregation in Waterville. The truth of their hearts helped me overcome my wall of religious textual evidence that helped justify arguments for the other side. . . .

"This Hanukkah as I light my menorah, I think of our modern battle that was won in Maine for equal rights. We have witnessed a miracle, as a small group of people of faith won victory over strongly entrenched, wrong beliefs. It is a miracle of love. Soon, some people consecrating their love in religious ceremonies of marriage will ask for God's blessing. Our society has already blessed them.”

Very nice. And no mainstream normative American Orthodox rabbi necessarily would recognize any “conversion” attested to by this fellow — and certainly not one in which he was one of the three rabbis on the conversion panel. I certainly would not.  Hundreds of my American Orthodox rabbinical colleagues would not.

So why blame the Israeli rabbinate for not recognizing American “conversions” that American Orthodox rabbis also do not recognize?

The writer is adjunct professor of law at two prominent Southern California law schools, Senior Rabbinic Fellow at the Coalition for Jewish Values, congregational rabbi of Young Israel of Orange County, California, and has held prominent leadership roles in several national rabbinic and other Jewish organizations. He was Chief Articles Editor of UCLA Law Review, clerked for the Hon. Danny J. Boggs in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and served for most of the past decade on the Executive Committee of the Rabbinical Council of America. His writings have appeared in The Weekly Standard, National Review, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Jerusalem Post, American Thinker, Frontpage Magazine, and Israel National News.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/22240?utm_source=activetrail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

 

Rabbi Glazerson searched the words “erev rav”, “left” and “Moshiach.” & came up --- ׳צא מ׳ברוקלן קרון ה׳׳טץ הרב הצד׳ק הקדוש ׳ו-א׳- דז׳

 ׳צא מ׳ברוקלן קרון ה׳׳טץ הרב הצד׳ק הקדוש ׳ו-א׳- דז׳

Torah Codes: The Dark Angel of the Left-Wing Battling Messiah

“A wise man’s mind tends toward the right hand, a fool’s toward the left.” Ecclesiastes 10:2 (The Israel Bible™)

Thousands of Israelis attended a march organized by the left-wing “Peace Now” movement in Tel Aviv

According to  Matityahu Glazerson, a Torah Codes buffoon, the political conflict between the left-wing and the right-wing is a mystical war that has Biblical roots.

  According to the rabbi, hidden clues in the Bible indicate that the Left-Wing will be defeated this year as a precursor to the Messiah. 

As in the US, the battle lines in politics are drawn according to religious observance. Rabbi Meir Mazuz, a leading Sephardic Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) rabbi in Israel who is the spiritual head of the Yachad political party, gave a speech last week in his yeshiva (Torah Seminary)  of Kissei Rachamim (Seat of Mercy) in Bnei Brak. In the lesson, the rabbi described the imminent demise of the political left-wing and the corresponding rise of religion.

“Once, it was not considered ‘modern’ to speak about God,” Rabbi Mazuz said. “Now, a lot of water has flowed (a lot has changed), and people speak about God. The Left is going down and nothing of it will remain. Slowly, everyone will be speaking about God, and the crazy leftists will remain outside in their own camp. The tide of the times is to return to faith. People are returning to faith, even someone who does not say so explicitly – he has something in his heart.”

This demise of the left was also discussed by Rabbi Glazerson in a recent video. Rabbi Glazerson agreed with Rabbi Mazuz’s assessment of the future of the left-wing. The rabbi noted that the name of the political movement has mystical connotations.

“It is not by chance that the left-wing is named as they are,” Rabbi Glazerson said to Breaking Israel News. “In Kabbalistic (mystical) terms, the left signifies din (judgment), which is characterized by limitation, or contraction.”

Rabbi Glazerson explained this quality of contraction as it was exhibited by the erev rav (mixed multitude) in the Bible.

Moreover, a mixed multitude went up with them, and very much livestock, both flocks and herds. Exodus 12:38

“The erev rav were responsible for the sin of the Golden Calf. Rather than worship the God of Israel who has no physical form but fills the world with spirit, they wanted a strictly material god, a smaller god that could be contained. This is din, the left wing in Kabbalah that is contraction and limiting. But with the Golden Calf, they were trying to limit God. This is precisely the materialist philosophy that has taken over the universities.”

ORIGINATED FROM THE BIBLE CODES

“The Zohar (the seminal source for Jewish mysticism) states that in the end of days, the erev rav will be the heads of Israel, ruling over the courts and learning institutions, even over Torah learning,” Rabbi Glazerson said. “Elohim, the name for God that represents judgment, also represents nature. They have taken God out of nature.”

Rabbi Glazerson found clues in the Bible that indicate the demise of the left-wing is imminent as a precursor to Moshiach (Messiah). Using a Torah program that searches for equidistant letter sequences in the Bible, Rabbi Glazerson searched for the words “erev rav”, “left” and “Moshiach.”

The rabbi also searched for “Amalek,” a Biblical nation that has become the archetypal enemy of Israel, since he found an implicit link between all these concepts. Amalek is the grandson of Esau. His descendants formed the nation of Amalek that attacked Israel as they left Egypt. The attack was particularly despicable in that it targeted the weaker members of the people, children and the elderly. 
He found all of the words concentrated in the 25th chapter of Exodus. 

Rabbi Glazerson found the words “ketz smole” (“end of the left”) and “ketz erev rav” (end of the mixed multitude) and “Amalek”. All these phrases were adjacent to the letters tav (ת), shin (ש), ayin (ע), chet (ח). The numeric equivalent of these letters is 5778, the current year according to the Hebrew calendar. 

“This is significant, showing that the left wing is connected to Amalek and the mixed multitude,” Rabbi Glazerson explained. “And this year will mark the beginning of the end of the left-wing as a first stage to Moshiach.”

“King David’s successful war against the Amalekites will be replayed in the end of days as a part of the Messiah from the house of David,” Rabbi Glazerson explained, emphasizing that the code indicated that the process leading to the end of the left-wing would begin this year.

The word smole (left) has a hidden connotation in Hebrew connecting it to ‘Samael’, the main archangel of death. The rabbi explained that in Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism), the letters sin (ש) and samech (ס) are interchangeable. This exchange of letters makes the word smole (שמאל) (‘left’) identical to the name Samael (סמאל). 

Rabbi Glazerson said that the left-wing combines the forces of Samael with Amalek.

“Samael is the angel of Amalek. The gematria (Hebrew numerology) of Samael, 131, plus the gematria of Amalek, 240, totals 371,” Rabbi Glazerson pointed out. “This precisely equals the gematria of smole (left). The left takes its strength from both Samael and from Amalek.”

“Anything that lessens life in the world is against Torah and against Moshiach as per the contractive nature of the left side of din,” Rabbi Glazerson said. “The left-wing promotes these things, like abortion, homosexuality, and euthanasia. They condemn the IDF in its battle against groups that openly call for death. The left claims they are doing it out of love and caring, but it is really because they draw their essence from the left side.”

“This attachment to lifelessness has to be overcome for the Moshiach to come,” Rabbi Glazerson said. “The Moshiach will bring t’chiyat ha’matim, (resurrection of the dead), a miraculous increase of life.”



https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/108565/rabbis-the-end-of-the-left-wing-signals-the-beginnings-of-messiah/?utm_source=Breaking+Israel+News&utm_campaign=64d8bfb44e-BIN_evening_5_18&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b6d3627f72-64d8bfb44e-86887905&mc_cid=64d8bfb44e&mc_eid=5c746532a2

This is a a story that should never repeat itself - one brave girl's tale of how an older staff member in a (frum) religious Jewish summer camp, who was meant to be a role model, took advantage of a broken girl --- Parents, show this to your children before they go to camp!

ENABLE CC (SUBTITLES/CLOSED CAPTIONING) TO READ HER WORDS AS WELL --- BY CLICKING CC on YouTube.

EVIDENCE AS SUBMITTED TO BAIS DIN (JEWISH COURT)
https://drive.google.com/…/13v4SMxbxIgpZY9EK-LSp1BBQ5o…/view


 by Asher Lovy:

I'd recommend that everyone take a few minutes out of their day and watch this video. Even just listen to it if you don't have the time on a busy Friday to watch it through. Gittie Kohn Sheinkopf, currently of Lakewood, abused this young woman, and must be held accountable.

A few things are notable about this story.

In a recorded phone call Gittie seems to be under the impression that Oorah will have her back should the victim ever go public (which she did in this video). It is noteworthy that the abuser assumes that she'd have institutional support against her victim. It speaks to a certain prevalent mentality in our community in which abusers assume they can abuse with impunity because institutions tend to protect abusers, not children entrusted to their care.

Leah, the victim in this video, mentions that she went to beis din to file a claim against her abuser because the statute of limitations on her abuse had already passed. Leah is not an old woman.

 The abuse happened when she was 15 years old, according to the video, around ten years ago. Under current New York State law, victims only have until age 23 to report sexual abuse. After they turn 23, there is no legal recourse whatsoever for an victim against their abuser. There is no legal process by which to identify and expose your abuser, which is why Leah resorted to beis din.

Leah got a hazamana (halachic summons) issued to Gittie through the beis din, and Gittie failed to appear. The beis din issued a seruv against her.

According to the video, Gittie is a social worker (Unlicensed?). It's horrifying to think about the fact that she may be counseling vulnerable children, especially since that gives her a ready pool of victims to abuse.

Take a look at the accompanying evidence to this video:

https://drive.google.com/…/13v4SMxbxIgpZY9EK-LSp1BBQ5o…/view

What jumped out at me from this packet is the clear grooming process. Gittie starts off in the messages being cutesy and friendy, and progresses to sexual innuendo. This is textbook grooming. 

You normalize the presence of a sexual component in an inherently imbalanced relationship (camper, staff) so that when the abuser violently introduces sex into the relationship without consent, sexuality has already been normalized somewhat in the context of that relationship.

Parents need to keep an eye on what's happening with their children at summer camps. If you see this kind of correspondence, even if you think it's innocent, make sure it stops. Make sure contact with that staff member is cut off. Report it to the camp. If you suspect abuse, report it to the authorities. Don't wait, don't ask permission, report it immediately.

Camp staff, if you see this sort of grooming, stop it. If you suspect abuse (yes, even if you just suspect it but don't know for sure) report it first to the authorities. Your first phone call shouldn't be to anyone ONLY the police, or ACS.

https://www.facebook.com/zaakah/posts/1624719967635566

This mom lost custody of her 7 children after leaving her ultra-Orthodox community...

     

The Netflix documentary “One of Us” tells the story of Etty Ausch, who was raised in an ultra-Orthodox community in Brooklyn and guided into a loveless arranged marriage at age 18. She describes how she lost her children because she left the community and what has happened since.


Note from UOJ: I have no idea if she is otherwise competent to raise her children in a stable environment - Nor am I capable of rendering any opinion since I do not know the parties involved, nor the circumstances. Her opinion is that of a mom who loves her children. Obviously, in these circumstances, there are no winners.

...And in the beginning....בְּרֵאשִׁית

An Anonymous Flier (Pashkevil) In Brooklyn
By: Editorial Board  
Wednesday, February 22, 2006

It was doubtless inadvertent, but the author of the flier makes our point. Thus, the flier recites that "this mailing should not have been necessary," inasmuch as the target and his employer were warned in advance that if the individual either resigned or was fired, "th[e] mailing would be stopped." And on the Internet, the author has declared to one and all that he is about to "uncover" others if they do not accede to his demands. 

Plainly, this individual is engaged in an effort to fashion a weapon with which to impose his will on Klal Yisrael.

An anonymously written flier mailed recently to many Jewish homes in Brooklyn, containing lurid accusations of improper conduct against an individual in our community and railing against his employer for not firing him, should be taken as a serious warning of a cancer growing in our midst. The flier not only offers no substantiation of the charges themselves, but also reports uncorroborated – and, it turns out, vigorously denied – comments from the employer, which the flier’s unknown author offers as proof of a cover-up.

The mere circulation of the document has caused some, albeit limited, discussion as to the culpability of both the accused individual and the employer – this despite the lack of any evidence or the possibility of any follow-up with the accuser. But if even one person takes this sort of thing seriously, there is cause for concern. Compounding the problem is that the purveyor of this material seems fully at home with the Internet and has spread it anonymously on that medium as well, guaranteeing that it will be seen by all that many more people, both within and without the Jewish community.

Anonymous accusers effectively destroying their targets’ reputations, even before the truthfulness of the accusations are ascertained, cannot be the way of Klal Yisrael – and indeed has never been. Certainly it accords neither with halacha nor with common sense. It is precisely for this reason that for millennia we have invariably insisted that those making claims against another take the accused to a bet din in order to determine the facts and, if necessary, the halacha.

On another level, it is hardly engaging in hyperbole to suggest that if the notion takes root that an anonymous purveyor of unsubstantiated charges can get peoples’ tongues wagging, then none of us can count ourselves safe. It will enable anyone to exercise devastating power at any time and under any circumstances simply by choosing to do so, for whatever motive.

But it is not the excesses of one individual that are of primary concern. As a general proposition, before we even begin thinking about anyone’s having gone astray, we must have more to go on than mere innuendo and accusation flung about by nameless, faceless sources. It is incumbent upon each of us to resolve to give no credence to unproven charges and to urge their being discredited on a community-wide basis. That’s something that certainly should apply to this particular anonymous accuser.

We would also remind readers that President Bush recently signed into law a statute making it illegal for any person to use the Internet to post anonymous accusations designed to inflict pain and suffering on others. In this instance the anonymous accuser should be aware that if identified, he runs the risk of fine and imprisonment for violation of a federal statute.