Halacha Instead of Morals: How ultra-Orthodox Sex Offenders Justify Their Actions

'In Haredi society, sexual matters are not discussed, and if the subject does come up, it is only mentioned in halakhic or religious contexts and not in the context of morality,' says Yitzhak Rosenblum, who studied the phenomenon.

 

It was evening in Jerusalem, time for Friday night prayers at a synagogue in the city’s Bukharim neighborhood. A boy sat down next to an adult man. Other worshippers started yelling to the boy to get up and move, said Yitzhak Rosenblum, who witnessed the incident. “Not there. Sit somewhere else,” they urged the boy, who didn’t understand what all the fuss was about.

They also spoke to the man. “They told him, in a joking way, ‘You know this is a shul here. It’s not …,’” Rosenblum recounts, but the warnings were not more explicit than that. They didn’t tell the boy that he’d been sitting beside a convicted sex offender. “Nothing happened, but the way they were laughing, it was as if they were talking to someone who stole gum from a store or something like that, not someone who sexually assaulted children,” Rosenblum says.

Rosenblum wasn’t all that surprised by the incident, which occurred a few years ago. Besides being a master’s student in criminology at Hebrew University, he is also Haredi – ultra-Orthodox – and a father of eight. He is very familiar with this atmosphere in which a sex offender is accepted with relative nonchalance.

It’s not necessarily a matter of evil or lack of caring, he says, but due to the glaring lack of knowledge in Haredi society about the severe consequences of sexual assault. Rosenblum is not just speculating. A research study he recently conducted reveals the cognitive processes that facilitate the sexual assault of children by Haredi assailants – processes that cause the assailants, and their society too, to see their actions as justified.

The study points to three key characteristics, he says: lack of knowledge on the part of the assailants as well as the victims and the society as a whole regarding sex, and especially regarding sexual assault; a perception of sexual assault as a halakhic prohibition, meaning that it is contrary to Jewish religious law, and less as a moral prohibition; and moral-religious justifications that absolve the perpetrator of responsibility and reduce the severity of the violation (in his eyes).

These conclusions come from interviews Rosenblum conducted with 10 therapists, half of them Haredi, who specialize in treating sexual assailants who come from that community. Some of these therapists have treated hundreds of abusers. “They know Haredi culture and all of its unique nuances, things a nonreligious person wouldn’t understand,” Rosenblum says.

In his research, Rosenblum essentially obtained access to the inner logic of thousands of Haredi abusers. And he found out that many of them are completely unaware that this is what they are.

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In the absence of basic sexual knowledge, including regarding sexual assault and its implications, and in the absence of any discussion about the subject in Haredi schools, ultra-Orthodox  families and Haredi media, the warning signs simply do not appear.

“A lot of abusers said they had no idea that there was anything wrong with what they did,” said one of the therapists interviewed for the study. “They thought it was like when siblings roughhouse with each other, that there could be sexual things too. They don’t understand the meaning of sexuality, what its purpose is, why this kind of abuse is such a serious violation.”

But it’s not just a lack of knowledge. The study reveals that the potential offender often gives weight almost exclusively to the religious-halakhic aspect of the deed and not to the moral aspect of doing horrific harm to another person. “They come to me when the thing that bothers them the most is the ‘spilled seed in vain,’” said one therapist. “That is what they are most concerned about, at least at first.”

The abuser views their action as a transgression between man and God. And the possibility of seeking forgiveness from God is another thing that enables the abuse (unlike transgressions between man and his fellow man, in which the other person’s forgiveness is needed).

“This is a mechanism that reassures them,” one therapist explained, noting that this also increases the risk that the person will become a repeat offender. “The next time they get the urge, they’ll act on it, because their subconscious is basically telling them, ‘It turned out okay. You cried, you atoned for your sin, you asked God for forgiveness.’”

Other offenses, such as theft and murder, are seen as an offense against both man and God, i.e., something that cannot be atoned for just through fasting and prayers on Yom Kippur. But with sexual offenses, this angle is missing.

“This creates the illusion that there is no real violation of the other side,” Rosenblum says. “In Haredi society, sexual matters are not discussed, and if the subject does come up, it is only mentioned in halakhic or religious contexts and not in the context of morality and society. The related religious-halakhic literature is not studied.”

And when that is the case, the third characteristic – moral-religious justifications – seems almost inevitable. “If you’re not talking about sex and you’re not talking about sexual offenses and you’re not talking about legal consequences, then you’re also not talking from a moral standpoint about what it does to the victim,” said one therapist.

Illustrator: Aharon Ehrlich

Other therapists described a similar problem. “The most significant thing is that the offender lives in a world where the question is what is forbidden and what is allowed, not what is the right thing morally, who am I hurting,” said one. “It’s not uncommon for such patients to struggle to understand just what offense they committed. They say, ‘Okay, I touched someone, but no homosexual intercourse took place, so where’s the prohibition here?’”

What happened in the dorm 

The interviews Rosenblum conducted with the therapist were extensive and yielded a number of stories. Such as one about the dormitory of a well-known yeshiva where there was a serial sex offender. The principal took it upon himself to speak to one of the (Haredi) therapists. “He told me about a guy who ‘fools’ with boys,” he said. The therapist understood right away what was really happening and warned the principal to take action. But they decided to keep the student in the dorm.

“I was horrified, and realized there was nothing I could do,” the therapist said, adding that the principal’s behavior was in part a consequence of his Haredi education and lack of understanding of the issue.

And when the educational institutions don’t take a strong stand or do all they can to prevent abuse, the risk of someone who comes from this world committing such offenses is higher, said one therapist. Seven of the 10 therapists agreed, with one theorizing that the religious worldview could be more susceptible to errors of thinking in this regard.

Another problem is that the legal implications are perceived as less critical than the religious ones. “The presence of the halakhic aspect weakens and even neutralizes the legal aspect,” Rosenblum says. “So the Haredi offender does not ascribe due importance to the fact that this is prohibited by civilian law.”

Offenders were found to use various psychological defense mechanisms, such as emotional detachment. “I don’t know what came over me,” said one. “I wasn’t myself in those moments.”

Another mechanism is to claim helplessness – “I have an area where I’m weak, I don’t know what to do. It’s stronger than me,” another explained. Others attributed their actions to the “evil impulse” or a “foolishness” that came over them. As one put it, “That’s not me. Do you really think I would hurt someone? That I would do such terrible things”?

Education, information needed

So the question is – what can be done? “I recommended that the Haredi school system create educational material to raise the awareness of the severe effects that sexual assault have on both the victims and the offenders themselves,” Rosenblum writes. “Today there is much more openness in the Haredi community to this subject than there was in the past, but most of the education refers to ‘being protected,’ i.e., how to guard against sexual assault.”

He says this is a beginning, but the other side must also be addressed – people have to be taught how not to commit sexual offenses. And this needs to be done with a lot of explanation and raising awareness of the serious consequences of sexual assault. “This information campaign needs to address all the aspects that were discussed in the study – religious, halakhic, legal, moral and social.”

But meanwhile, the problem remains serious. How serious? That is not easy to answer.

“There is a problem that must be understood and addressed,” says Dr. Inbal Wilamoski of Hebrew University, Rosenblum’s research adviser, who adds, “There are many stereotypes about Haredim … but there is sexual violence and pedophilia in every community.”

In the past decade, and especially in the last few years, significant changes have occurred in Haredi society’s attitude toward sexual offenses. The change may still be incremental, but awareness is steadily growing. For one thing, Haredi media have begun to report on cases of sexual assault, though they use softened language which lessens the severity of it. And various organizations have been created to address the subject, with teachers in some Haredi schools being taught to recognize the problem if they see it.

“We have permission from all the Haredi rabbis and leaders,” says one person involved who prefers to remain anonymous. “But it is verbal consent, on condition that everything is done quietly.”

So while there has certainly been progress, it appears that Haredi society is still a long way from declaring war on sexual offenses.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-ultra-orthdox-sex-offenders-rarely-feel-guilty-over-abuses-therapists-say-1.9957171

Nachman Shai, the minister for Diaspora Affairs and the highest-ranking Israeli official in Surfside this week, evoked the closeness of the Jewish world—and thus the unusually global reach of what could seem like local troubles—this way: “It’s important for Jews in the diaspora to know that we care for them and that we will come any time they need us.”

 

The IDF Arrives in Surfside - No Questions Asked - Jew or Gentile!

 

Israeli rescuers are helping alleviate the suffering in Miami, showing that Jews (all Jews) can still resemble a family.

Members of the Israel Rescuers delegation gather upon their arrival in the area near the partially collapsed 12-story Champlain Towers South condo building in the city of Surfside, Florida, on June 27, 2021.

On Saturday, less than three days after the north side of the Champlain Towers in Surfside, Fl., collapsed, Telemundo released a video of a tense standoff between the mother of a missing 26-year-old woman and Florida governor Ron DeSantis during a closed-door briefing for families of those still missing. Ongoing fires and the instability of the surviving structure had slowed rescue efforts, leading to a toxic feedback loop of unknowing: The families, caught in a terrifying rupture in reality and starved for information about their loved ones, reached the natural and painfully human conclusion that not enough was being done.

Frustration boiled during the early days of the catastrophe, but there were many ways that this was expressed. But in her confrontation with DeSantis, the mother articulated a somewhat unexpected criteria for proving that every means of rescue was in fact being exhausted. “I was promised yesterday, and everybody else was promised, that the Israelis would be allowed in and that they are here,” she pleaded. “I have inside information they are not here and they are not working. Governor, it’s in your control, as I understand. You promised us and they’re not here.”

On Sunday morning, the Israelis arrived—a small team consisting of the top brass of the Israel Defense Force’s Homefront Command, including two colonels. They joined a psycho-trauma unit from Israel-based United Hatzalah, and paramedics from Magen David Adom and Zaka who had also traveled to Miami from the Middle East. “They [the families] said, now stuff is getting done,” an Israeli who had been working with the families recalled to me. “I thought, wait, things were already getting done!”

As Maor Elbaz-Starinsky, Israel’s Consul General in Miami, told me, “It’s not that we’re coming and running the scene and we’re these big guys who save the world,” adding, “We’re not here to save America. We’re here to show support, solidarity. America would have done exactly the same.” Elbaz-Starinsky said he hadn’t left Surfside since last Thursday morning, and had stolen a few hours of sleep in his car on some nights.

The IDF team has been an object of special fascination. On Wednesday, in a tented and muddy press area with a weird resemblance to a county fairground, media swarmed Elad Edri, a close-shaven and unflinchingly calm IDF colonel clutching a yellow hard-hat, angling for quotes even while DeSantis was speaking less than 100 feet away. “Oh yeah, Elad’s way more interesting than the governor,” Dovie Maisel, the leader of the Israeli United Hatzalah team told me, probably accurately.

Edri is not working on the pile—the pictures of olive-clad rescuers crouched over concrete are not of him. Rather, his job is to interact with family members, in order to obtain information that could help locate and identify the missing. “You have to give them the chance to be a part of the operation,” Edri explained. “They are really taking an active part in what we do, in our actions. We don’t send the rescue teams before we get the right information that we need from the families.”

Edri’s job is as sensitive as the one his colleagues at the Champlain Towers are charged with, and it might go an even longer way toward explaining what the Israelis are doing here, and why their mere presence helped calm a combustible situation. The tragedy is also unfolding away from the pile, at the Sea View Hotel in Bal Harbour where the families are currently gathered, beyond the view of the media and among the people whose loved ones are somewhere in the morass of concrete. The Israelis are here for the living, and in the story of how and why they got to Surfside, it’s possible to truly appreciate the breadth of the tragedy in South Florida, as well as how its living victims might begin to heal.

That the Israeli visitors have succeeded in alleviating anyone’s suffering shows what the Jewish state can mean to people thousands of miles away during the worst moment of their lives. Just weeks after an 11-day conflict with Hamas that raised fresh anxieties over a schism between Israel and the diaspora, the tragedy in Surfside shows that the connections between American Jews and the Jewish state are not merely political and go beyond the strictly rational. The bonds are resilient in ways that perhaps only a crisis can fully surface. In moments of need, all other contexts retreat into the background, and the Jews can still resemble a family.

The tragedy in Surfside shows that the connections between American Jews and the Jewish state are not merely political and go beyond the strictly rational.

When Baruch Sandhaus arrived at the Champlain Towers minutes after the collapse, he witnessed a dreadful reprise of something he had seen before, nearly twenty years earlier, as one of the first Hatzalah paramedics to arrive at the site of the World Trade Center on September 11, not long before the second plane hit: “A lot of debris on the ground, clouds of ash, layers on the road and on cars.” Sandhaus, an owner of a medical concierge service who left New York for Miami in 2005, is one of three co-founders of the all-volunteer Hatzalah of South Florida, and he coordinated the first on-site triage in Surfside in the early hours late last Thursday morning.

It was the human element of the tragedy that soon proved most challenging. Friday’s briefing for family members of the missing was widely seen as disastrous, with the authorities, however well-meaning, providing little in the way of useful information. They faced tearful inquiries about why so few rescuers appeared to be on the scene—even though the rubble was still on fire and the full collapse of the rest of the building was a distinct possibility. “On Friday, the temperature started getting hotter,” Sandhaus recalled. Family members wandered the second floor of the Grand Beach hotel all night—hardly anyone could sleep. The Florida Hatzalah team turned to what seemed like the only solution, which ended up being the correct solution. They walked to The Shul, the Chabad complex in the heart of Bal Harbour, and got Rabbi Sholom Lipskar out of bed at 1am on Saturday. The rabbi, who is in his late 70s, and who nearly died of covid last year, asked to be taken to the scene of the disaster, to see where several of his congregants were trapped.

Lipskar was sent to south Florida by the Lubavitcher Rebbe himself, the late Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Many credit Lipskar for the existence of a Jewish community in what had been seen as an unfriendly section of Miami Beach well into the 1980s (“Jews like to go where they tell us we can’t go,” said Zushie Litkowski, a longtime Bal Harbour resident and a post-disaster volunteer and fundraising organizer). Lipskar seldom smiles but is never angry, and he has seemingly inexhaustible stores of energy and focus. He exhibits little physical or emotional strain beneath his glasses and white beard, but is far from unfeeling, and in recent days he’s proven capable of shouldering impossible psychic, organizational, and spiritual burdens without appearing overwhelmed.

Early Saturday morning, Lipskar walked the perimeter of the site and talked to first responders. “I was shoving chairs under him to get him to sit down—he didn’t want to,” said Sandhaus, who estimated that the rabbi was on his feet for over four hours of his five hour visit. The site was far from safe. “Fires were still raging when we were there.” But Lipskar had a very specific mission in mind. As Sandhaus put it, “He wanted to be able to look the community in the eye to say to them definitively: All efforts are being done.” He left the site at 7:30am, to arrive back at The Shul in time for Shabbat morning services.

According to Sandhaus, Lipskar went to the site in part to assess whether the presence of an Israeli team would help the situation. He decided it would. Such is Lipskar’s status, Sandhaus said, that he “wasn’t gonna pull the trigger until [Lipskar] thought it was warranted.”

Hatzalah in South Florida contacted Magen David Adom in Israel, which maintains a close relationship with IDF Homefront Command, the branch of the army responsible for various forms of population management during a national emergency, with a mandate ranging from traffic control to urban search and rescue to earthquake preparation. As the Haaretz journalist Anschel Pfeffer once put it, the IDF, for all its flaws, and whatever else it might be, is the largest Jewish organization in the world. Nachman Shai, the minister for Diaspora Affairs and the highest-ranking Israeli official in Surfside this week, evoked the closeness of the Jewish world—and thus the unusually global reach of what could seem like local troubles—this way: “It’s important for Jews in the diaspora to know that we care for them and that we will come any time they need us.” In the official Israeli view, and in the view of many American Jews—including some in unimaginable distress in Surfside—the Jewish backyard extends for thousands of miles, meaning that every crisis is inevitably an intimate one, and that there is comfort to be had from people on the other side of the world feeling some responsibility for your pain.

Hatzalah in Florida made it clear that the IDF team would have to arrive immediately—such was the situation that there was almost no point in sending them if they couldn’t be in Miami by Sunday morning. The Israelis grasped the urgency. The IDF group was approved and mobilized in roughly two hours. The process of getting them to Miami began at around 5:30pm Israel time, and they were on a plane around midnight. They went straight from the airport to the pile.

I spoke to Sandhaus on Monday, in a Hatzalah van parked in front of the Grand Beach Hotel. He would look out the driver-side window and take long drags on a vape pen. Like nearly everyone I’ve met this week, he seemed a stray thought or two away from tears. In the midst of our conversation, we were suddenly boxed in by a city bus, which had arrived to transport families of the missing to the Sea View, the new briefing venue. A group of them walked right in front of us, their faces fixed in disembodying shock. It had rained nearly all day—nature wouldn’t relent for them.

“They’re still in the mindset of: They’re gonna find somebody,” Sandhaus said of the searchers six blocks south of us. “They’re in that mindset that they’re still gonna find that one person.”

Of all the unanswerable questions that the Surfside catastrophe poses, a good number stray into the realm of the practical. What possible comfort can the survivors and families feel right now? Could anything meaningfully lessen their suffering? On Sunday, groups of family members began visiting the site of the collapse, a partially successful test of one possible response to those dilemmas. The visitors shouted names and screamed goodbyes. But seeing the Israelis work on the pile, Sandhaus said, “provided them a sense of comfort.”

“In the first five minutes there were a lot of emotions and crying,” Yossi Harlig, a Miami police chaplain and a Chabad rabbi in Kendall, south of Miami, said. “But as the hour went on, you saw a sort of calmness. People started praying. We put on tefillin with people. And the reason is people felt they had another opportunity to be close to their loved one.”

Part of the Israeli theory of trauma reduction is that those at risk must be kept occupied. As United Hatzalah therapist Hadas Rucham explained to me, one of the group’s trauma protocols could be summed up in a single Hebrew world: ma’ase, which can mean either “make,” or “do.” “When people are stressed, make them do things. Make them be active.” The IDF’s presence could be thought of as part of the healing process: Describing the layout of an apartment, or a distinguishing physical feature or piece of jewelry or clothing to Edri or one of his colleagues is an activity that assuages one’s sense of helplessness, restoring some basic sense of agency and purpose in a world that’s suddenly lost all logic. On Tuesday afternoon, Elbaz-Starinsky estimated that 80 percent of the families, Jewish and non-Jewish, had talked to the IDF team.

Rucham works at the Laniado Hospital in Netanya, and is a national dispatcher for United Hatzalah’s psycho-trauma team in Israel, determining where the unit’s 500 volunteers are most needed. In October of 2018, she was with a Hatzalah team from Israel that traveled to Pittsburgh to offer support after the massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue.

“In Pittsburgh they needed their security back, especially the children,” she recalled. The Jews needed to regain a lost sense of comfort within an environment that suddenly became destabilized, even threatening. “Here the need is mostly for information... when people have information they can cope. Without information they feel helpless, like nobody knows them, nobody sees them.”

The need to establish some basic certainty in the midst of a ceaseless horror extends beyond the families. Much of the community feels that need, and felt it from the moment they heard the news of the tower’s collapse. For many, the answer to uncertainty was action. At 2:30am last Thursday, about 80 minutes after the disaster, Zushie Litkowski and Svia Bension, both in their mid-30s, were already on the phone with a third friend, Efraim Stefansky, planning a relief fund, which launched about an hour later. The effort now has the support of Hatzalah of South Florida and The Shul, and its total now stands at over $1.3 million. On Wednesday, Bension was helping to coordinate a team that has grown to 250 volunteers, who are delivering items and sorting through donations. Both Bension and Litkowski say they’ve gotten two to three hours of sleep each night since the collapse. “More and more volunteers started to come in,” Bension recalled of the early hours of the crisis. “Someone asked, are you in charge? I said yeah, sure, why not.”

The Israelis are bringing their Israeliness.

Bension served for six years as an officer in Magav, the IDF’s border patrol unit, where she spent time as a SWAT team squad leader. She moved to Florida from New York last November. Israelis are unavoidable on the north end of Miami Beach, which would be the case if United Hatzalah, Magen David Adom, and the IDF had never traveled here. At the Bal Harbour Publix, a man shouted into a phone in Hebrew while he loaded ice into a golf cart; at the media tent, someone in a Miami-Dade Fire and Rescue uniform conversed with officers from the IDF team in the visitors’ native tongue. One of the leaders of Yedidim, a volunteer group that has been ubiquitous across Surfside, is an Israeli who arrived in Florida 18 years ago.

“The Israelis are bringing their Israeliness,” Elbaz-Starinsky said of the teams that had arrived in Miami. But the Israelis have been bringing their Israeliness to Miami for a while now. This week, Surfside and Bal Harbor have been an image of a Jewish world where the psychic distances were getting shorter and where Israel and the diaspora were direct extensions of each other rather than opposite poles, for reasons running far deeper than the political or religious climate in either context. Perhaps that would have been the case even if the tower were still standing, and the local Israeli-Americans hadn’t needed to snap into crisis mode, a condition that their native country had mastered through hard necessity.

The IDF is expected to stay in Florida through the middle of next week. No one can predict how long it will take to clear the rubble at the Champlain Towers. Residents speculate darkly about a weeks-long process, or about funerals being held every day for a month. Donated items are being moved out of The Shul, both because the synagogue’s day camp for children started this week and because the space will likely have to be used for shiva calls, though no one knows when those will begin.

It is the unknowing that still marks this tragedy, just as it did a week ago. Sandhaus recalled that during one of the family visits to the site, a relative of the missing came up to him and asked, “‘Be honest: Will I have something, anything to bury—a finger, anything?’ I did not know what to say.” Then a dog on the pile started barking. “I said, these dogs only bark when they sniff something. That’s your answer. It gave him comfort to know there’s hope. All he wanted was something to be able to bury.”

The worst possible form of closure constitutes hope in Surfside now, where 147 people remain unaccounted for, but the power of having a definite answer—along with the certainty of some basic final solace—should never be underestimated. Moments before I spoke with Rabbi Harlig, who wore a badge identifying himself as a police chaplain, a man approached him and another officer, and “opened a yellow envelope, and took out a picture of him and his son,” Harlig recalled. “He said, ‘I want to let you know that my son was in the building. And yesterday they notified me that they found my son. And he gives us a hug and says: Thank you so much for bringing back my son so that I could bury him.’”

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/armin-rosen-idf-surfside

Meron, Karlin-Stolin, & Surfside - Why Is There No Message From God on Surfside?

 

UOJ OPINION:

There were no shortage of God's messages sent to us through the "Great Rabbis or Gedolim" when it came to the Meron and Karlin-Stolin tragedies. Lack of tznius, loshon hara, not learning enough Torah, going lenient on kashruth, long wigs, short dresses, not listening to the Gedolim on everything, Internet, having a smartphone; I'm certain there are more.

Why no messaging from God on Surfside?

 

Why is there no "Kinnus Hisorarus" organized by the Agudath Israel? Why is there no Zoom day of Chizuk? Where is Paysach Krohn with his bubba masses that he relates going back to the baal agala of the Baal Shem Tov? Anyone see Rabbi Frand out there stomping the bimah how mixed swimming could be the problem? Living on a beach - OY! Imagine if the engineers confirm severe damage to the pool slab that was part of the support beams that were part of the foundation where the mixed swimming took place! And what good could people see if their units faced the pool and the beach Hashem yirachem? What about Yanky Kanievsky feeding the public with a mouthful of nonsense his grandfather never said?

I asked this question to the rabbis that I communicate with, (yes, many Orthodox rabbis).

Besides the usual " we don't understand the workings of Hashem, certainly there is a message; one rabbi was brave/dumb enough or had enough chutzpah to actually tell me that he was certain there was no public message because" God does not send messages to Jews through "Goyim".

It resonated with me because one such giant (lower case g) told me something similar years ago.

In other words, if everyone that lived in Champlain Towers South in Surfside were Jews, there would be a message, since gentiles were part of the tragedy and many lived there, there will be no message from God through the tragedy of gentiles.

At least for now.

But Jews are creative, when this post goes viral, as most of them do, there will be O so many messages from God!

Wait for it!

 *

Floor by Floor, the Missing People and Lost Lives Near Miami

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/06/30/us/miami-building-missing-dead.html

Like We Needed Nuch A Putz With No Sechel!

 

Chief Rabbi Yosef: Science, math are nonsense, study in yeshiva instead

 

The chief rabbi spoke proudly of not finishing school or having a high school diploma, and said learning Torah was far more important.

Chief Sephardic Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef at a Remembrance Day 2021 Ceremony

 

Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef described Israel’s school core curriculum studies program as “nonsense” and said pupils should study in yeshivas instead where only religious studies are taught.

 

Yosef’s comments sparked criticism toward the Sephardi chief rabbi, who was accused of promoting dependence on government handouts and charitable donations instead of advancing self-reliance.

“There is nothing like the holy Torah, the Torah is above everything,” said Yosef in a recent synagogue address, first reported by the Kikar Shabbat news website.

 

“If a pupil is asked where do you want to go, a yeshiva high school [where religious studies are taught together with the core curriculum] or a holy yeshiva, there is no doubt, a holy yeshiva, there is no doubt,” declared the chief rabbi.

 

“There they learn Torah without secular subjects, without the core curriculum, without all this nonsense, they sit and learn.”

 

Added Yosef proudly, I myself, did I learn the core curriculum? Did I finish school? Until today I don’t have a graduation certificate, not a high-school diploma and not a graduation certificate, did I miss anything? It’s nonsense, the most important thing is our holy Torah.

 

The large majority of ultra-Orthodox boys do not study the core curriculum of math, English, science and computer studies at elementary school level, and the overwhelming majority do not study this curriculum at high-school level.

 

Socioeconomic experts have warned that this failure to provide a basic education to boys in the ultra-Orthodox sector combined with the high rate of population growth in this community means that Israel’s economy will be imperiled in coming centuries with an inadequate workforce for the 21st century.

 

The Ne’emanei Torah Va’Avodah (NTA) organization panned Yosef’s comments saying that his “disparagement of yeshiva high schools is testament to how the chief rabbi is out of touch with the broader community that he is supposed to serve.

 

The organization said Yosef had turned himself into the rabbi of a small group of people “who withhold from themselves and their children the possibility of getting an education and earning an income with dignity, and [instead] making them dependent on donations and cronyism.”

 

NTA said that Yosef’s comments demonstrated the need to drastically change the system of electing chief rabbis in order to reduce political influence and increase public influence over the manner in which the positions are elections. 

 

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/chief-rabbi-yosef-science-math-are-nonsense-study-in-yeshiva-instead-672378?_ga=2.110175425.510257403.1624874714-1969581575.1579377799&utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Lapid%3A+Biden+admin++tying+Israel-Arab+normalization+to+Palestinians&utm_campaign=June+29%2C+2021+Night&vgo_ee=Jn367jKILnpErXAAhCpdDovy7T5YEJ8ohjC9vauJg30%3D

Two major Israeli haredi Orthodox rabbis said everyone aged 12 and over should be vaccinated against the coronavirus, according to The Jerusalem Post.

 

Major Orthodox rabbis in Israel say everyone 12 and up should be vaccinated

June 29, 2021 9:49 am

Eretz Nehederet, an Israeli satire show, aired a sketch on Jan. 27, 2021 portraying Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, a top haredi leader in Israel, as controlling the Israeli government's lockdown enforcement. (Screenshot from Channel 12)

(JTA) — Two major Israeli haredi Orthodox rabbis said everyone aged 12 and over should be vaccinated against the coronavirus, according to The Jerusalem Post.

Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, the influential leader known as the “prince of Torah,” and Rabbi Gershon Edelstein approved the announcement in a message printed by Kanievsky’s personal physician, Meshulam Hart, in Yated Neeman, an Israeli haredi Orthodox newspaper. The announcement comes as Israel struggles with an increase in coronavirus cases as a result of the more contagious Delta variant.

The rabbis said everyone should be vaccinated both to prevent further deaths from the virus and to prevent additional closures of yeshivas by the government.

Though Kanievsky has consistently come out in favor of the vaccines, his varying directives to Israel’s haredi school system during the height of the pandemic made him a polarizing figure. At times, Kanievsky said the yeshivas should not close even as government officials ordered all schools shut to slow the spread of the virus. Kanievsky was even depicted on Eretz Nehederet, an Israeli sketch comedy show, as the real prime minister rather than the then-prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

The haredi Orthodox community in Israel was among the hardest hit by the virus in the country, with one in 73 haredi Israelis over age 65 dying from the coronavirus during the first year of the pandemic, according to one report.

https://www.jta.org/quick-reads

 

Just When You Thought It Can't Possibly Get Crazier....

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CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

This Post Was Taken From VIN News - Substitute out Levin, Ben-Gurion, Reform Rabbis and insert Kushners (Plural) and the Fraudulent Conversion by Hershel Schachter

 

(Tanḥuma, Balak 10):

אף על פי שמשתבח אותו רשע ואומר ויודע דעת עליון פיו העיד בו ואמר לא ידעתי

Open Letter To ‘Proudly Jewish’ Rep. Andy Levin, Married To Gentile, Who Thinks Judaism Is A Culture

NEW YORK— In 1958, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, sent a letter to 51 Jewish intellectuals asking their opinion on how to identify who is a Jew.

Ben Gurion had both a personal and political interest in the question. In 1946, Ben Gurion’s son Amos, then serving in the British Army in Europe, married Mary Callow, a young Christian woman from the Isle of Man. Amos Ben-Gurion was wounded in battle; Mary Callow was his nurse in the British Army hospital in which he spent several months recovering. Before the wedding, Amos had consulted with his parents. His mother, Paula, objected to her son’s marriage to a non-Jew and asked her husband to “talk Amos out of it.” Ben-Gurion met with the bride and decided instead to find a way to convert her via a Reform rabbi visiting London, who quickly performed the conversion.

Ben-Gurion may have overcome his wife’s objections but realized that he had alienated the orthodox establishment irrevocably by recognizing other forms of Judaism. The question of identity loomed much larger after the Knesset passed the Law of Return in 1950. Ben-Gurion intended the law, which grants immediate citizenship to people of Jewish ancestry, to be as inclusive as possible, even allowing for gentiles married to Jews to gain citizenship. After Ben-Gurion’s approach was fiercely opposed by many other groups, he decided to send his letter.

The responses to Ben-Gurion’s letter were varied but 38 of the 46 responses Ben-Gurion received, even from secular scholars, called for following halachic Jewish law in registering Jews in Israel. For the orthodox scholars this was not even a legitimate question. Rabbi Aaron Kotler, founder of the Lakewood Yeshiva, opened his letter to Ben-Gurion in this way: “I am amazed at the fact that a question considering the purity and integrity of the Jewish people, whose preservation is the basis of our existence, should be posed as if it required some other solution or opinion from me. The question has a simple and explicit answer in the Holy Torah. … It is clear that a Jew is only someone who is a Jew according to the law of the Torah.”

While Ben-Gurion may have entertained hopes of establishing a “new Jew” in Israel who was not bound by halacha both in his personal life and in his choice of spouse, he realized that he would effectively be creating two nations within the fledgling state and stopped short of recognizing secular conversions or gentile spouses for the purpose of registering citizenship. Both of these were added later to the existing law, the former being adopted by Israel’ supreme court just a few months ago, raising concerns about future Jewish unity within Israel.

For many American Jews however, the question of their Jewish identity has never even been a troublesome dilemma. For them, Judaism is chicken soup and cheesecake, matzoh and gefilte fish, with a little celebration of festivals to add flavor. Anyone willing to sign on the dotted line stating he is Jewish will be happily accepted by numerous Reform, Conservative or Reconstructionist communal leaders who lead “culturally” Jewish communities, while his children could study in parochial Jewish schools and proudly identify as Jews.

One such proud Jew unfazed by Jewish identity issues is Rep. Andy Levin (D.-Michigan), a recent addition to Congress who identifies as a Reconstructionist. In a recent Haaretz interview, Levin stated that for him Judaism is “not just a religion. We’re a people, a culture, a food, a language, a history.” Levin is most concerned about one religious imperative: that of embracing the stranger, although somewhat patronizingly he believes that the stranger we most need to embrace is the Palestinians:

“Jews are great at the stranger who’s the immigrant or the African-American,” Levin claims. “We have to dwell on our most challenging stranger. I insist we can coexist. How amazing could that new chapter be if we see each other as human beings?”

True to his own beliefs, Levin embraces Rep. Ilhan Omar despite her recently equating Israel with the Taliban and Hamas. For Levin, this is merely a “call for accountability” for human rights abuses which he claims Israel and the US are evading by not submitting to ICC jurisdiction. “The one thing I cannot accept is assuming the U.S. or Israel are above accountability,” Levin asserts but for some reason omits a call for Palestinian accountability over firing rockets on civilian targets, payments to terrorists who slay and murder Israeli citizens and educating their children to become martyrs by killing Jews.

However if Levin is demanding a call for accountability, he should first demand it from himself. Claiming that Judaism is a religion means that it has a mandate of requirements for an individual, otherwise there can be no religious demand to embrace strangers. Among those mandates are Shabbat, Kashrut, family purity and Tefillin. Levin however would eschew a religion demanding any obligations from its adherents.

 

Josh Kushner & His Rebbetzin

 

 

If he had troubled to study the Torah, the body of laws which comprises those eternal, immutable obligations, he would have found that the stranger mentioned in context with love is one who accepts the seven Noachide laws which proscribe murder, theft and illicit laws – surely not the Palestinians who engage daily in land theft, encourage murder of Jews and enact laws which enable the execution of those who sell land to Jews. Do they view Jews as human beings?

All this is of no concern to Levin, since for him Jews are simply “a people”. If we are a people we have an identity, as Ben Gurion realized, and it is not so simple to maintain. Levin himself married a gentile but is still convinced that his children are part of the Jewish people, but exactly how? Does eating a matzoh ball, identifying with spurious Palestinian national aspirations or lighting a menorah (with a Christmas tree in the background) make them Jewish?

As for language, Levin does not speak any language of the Jewish people, neither Yiddish  nor Hebrew and if the Jewish nation’s historic bond is what maintains them, he should be aware that Rabbi Saadia Gaon defined the nation 1000 years ago: “Our nation is only a nation through its Torah.”

Levin will continue to pick and choose his Jewish identity as he pleases but he should stop short of declaring himself a proud Jew until he has thoroughly investigated what Judaism itself has meant for the past 3000 years: Devotion to G-d and his Torah, adherence to all of its precepts and belief in the right of the Jewish nation to its eternal birthright in the entire land of Israel.

 

https://vinnews.com/2021/06/24/open-letter-to-proudly-jewish-rep-andy-levin-married-to-gentile-who-thinks-judaism-is-a-culture/

Listen To Your Idiot/Ignorant Ant-Vaxxer Rabbis At Your Peril!

 

Coronavirus outbreak killed two at Fla. office, official says. A vaccinated person was spared.

The Manatee County Administration Building had a recent coronavirus outbreak among unvaccinated employees

Covid Returns: "We Need To Organize A Tish (Eat Herring With Our Rebbes)"

June 22, 2021

A coronavirus outbreak at a Florida government building killed two people and hospitalized several others who were unvaccinated against the virus, a county official said.

The Manatee County Administration Building reopened Monday after the virus that causes covid-19 spread throughout the county’s IT department and forced the building to shut down on Friday. Manatee County Administrator Scott Hopes, who is also an epidemiologist, said six unvaccinated employees, including five in the IT department, tested positive for the virus within a two-week period.

The two IT employees who died last week were identified in local media and obituaries as Mary Knight, 58, and Alphonso Cox, 53.

Hopes said that the one IT employee, 23, exposed to the virus who was vaccinated did not get infected.

“This particular outbreak demonstrates the effectiveness, I believe, with the vaccine,” he said to reporters Monday. “All of the cases were non-vaccinated. They were unvaccinated.” He added in a news release, “Individual employees in the IT Department who were known to be fully vaccinated and who were in close proximity of those who were infected did not contract COVID-19.”

But even with the outbreak, masks will remain optional for staffers returning this week, with unvaccinated workers being “encouraged but not required, to follow covid-19 prevention measures.”

At a news conference, Hopes said he suspected the outbreak could have been because of the delta coronavirus variant, which spreads more easily. The Manatee County Health Department is working with epidemiologists in contact tracing and to confirm whether the variant was responsible. Hopes said that the high fatality rate from the IT department’s outbreak suggested “we are dealing with a variant unlike what we had last year.”

The Florida outbreak comes as the delta variant has a chance to be the dominant strain in the United States this summer. First found in India, the highly contagious variant, which is accounting for 6 percent of new infections in the United States, “is more transmissible than the alpha variant,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said last week. Walensky noted that while she fears a new strain could prove resistant to vaccines, she emphasized that full vaccination protects against the delta variant.

“As worrisome as this delta strain is with regard to its hyper-transmissibility, our vaccines work,” she said in a recent interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

The United States has fully vaccinated 150 million people against the coronavirus, the White House said Monday, marking a major milestone even though the country is nowhere near the threshold necessary to snuff out the virus nationwide. Roughly 46 percent of U.S. residents have completed their vaccination schedule, according to data compiled by The Washington Post.

Florida, which has fully vaccinated 44 percent of its eligible population, has seen a sharp decline in the number of total doses administered in the past week. Manatee County, located in southwest Florida, has fully vaccinated 43 percent of its eligible population.

The Manatee Board of County Commissioners repealed coronavirus safety requirements last month and strongly recommended that people visiting the County Administration Building “use their best judgment” to protect themselves from a potential spread of the virus.

Then the coronavirus spread throughout the IT department, causing covid-19, killing and hospitalizing staffers. When the second employee died Thursday, the decision was made to shut down the building the next day so it could be disinfected.

“When you have that many cases, and you have a 40 percent fatality rate, you have to worry,” Hopes said to Florida Politics. “I would prefer not to have any more employee funerals.”

Yet the county announced over the weekend that “face masks will be optional for the public and employees inside the facility.”

“Visitors and employees who are fully vaccinated may return to work as usual,” Hopes said in a news release. “Unvaccinated individuals are encouraged, but not required, to follow COVID-19 prevention measures, including use of N95 or equivalent masks, which will be available at each entrance, and social distancing.”

Hopes defended the decision on CNN Monday, saying the focus was more on getting government employees vaccinated. The county is offering another vaccine clinic for employees at the Manatee County Administration Building on Friday.

“Clearly masks work, but the vaccine is more important at this point,” Hopes said.

Christopher Tittel, a spokesman with the Florida Department of Health in Manatee County, agreed with Hopes that vaccination among government employees is needed to help prevent another outbreak.

“We really need everybody to get onboard with this, whether it’s vaccination testing, prevention, all of it is so, so, so, so important,” Tittel told WTVT. “The vaccinations, they only work if people get vaccinated.”

Funerals and celebration-of-life events for Knight and Cox are scheduled to take place later this week.

Friends and co-workers remembered them both as loving community leaders.

Knight, an IT customer service center supervisor, was involved with Manatee County Women in Government and volunteered at local churches, according to her obituary. She’s survived by a large Italian family that includes her husband, six children and one granddaughter. Suzie McGuire, the acting IT director, wrote in an online message for Knight’s obituary that her close friend would be missed by many.

“She was a force beyond compare,” McGuire wrote. “Our hearts are broken.”

Cox, a senior systems analyst with Manatee County, was known in the area as a youth football coach with the Manatee Mustang Sports Academy for 20 years, reported the Bradenton Herald. The organization said on Facebook that Cox “personified dedication and selflessness,” and was “a father to the fatherless, a mentor to all, a hero in every aspect of the meaning, and a legend no less.” Reggie Bellamy, the organization’s commissioner, told the Herald that Cox impacted generations of young athletes.

“He had a lot of individuals that he touched, so it’s a very, very tough time,” Bellamy said.

Read more:https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/06/22/florida-unvaccinated-covid-outbreak/

 

READ 54 PAGES OF IGNORANCE:

https://k6s3v6r4.ssl.hwcdn.net/?file=20200114181029.pdf

CDC: Nearly every adult COVID-19 death is now "entirely preventable" - all available vaccines are still effective against the Delta variant, meaning it primarily poses a risk to people who are unvaccinated.

 “You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? Then who the h*** else are you talkin’ to? You talkin’ to me? Well, I’m the only one here. Who do … you think you’re talking to?” From Taxi Driver...( I'm talking to you pious crackpots)

 

CDC: Nearly every adult COVID-19 death is now "entirely preventable"

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky

 

Adult deaths from COVID-19 are "at this point entirely preventable" thanks to vaccines, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said during a White House coronavirus briefing on Tuesday.

Why it matters: Deaths from the virus have dramatically decreased since their peak in early 2021, but the U.S. is still currently reporting an average of more than 200 deaths every day, though the numbers could increase as the B.1.617.2 (or Delta) variant of the virus becomes the dominant strain in the country.

The big picture: NIAID Director Anthony Fauci said the Delta variant, which was first detected in India, is currently the greatest threat to the elimination of the coronavirus in the U.S. because it's more transmissible and associated with increased disease severity than the most common variant of the virus.

• However, all available vaccines are still effective against the Delta variant, meaning it primarily poses a risk to people who are unvaccinated.

What they're saying: "This new virus forced too many of our families to accept death as an outcome for too many of our loved ones, but now this should not be the case," Walensky said.

• "We have the tools, so let's use them and crush the outbreak," Fauci said.
•  
• https://www.axios.com/cdc-adult-coronavirus-death-delta-variant-vaccines-2c8e4479-e162-4ca9-9fae-7c692d26b95a.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiospm&stream=top
  

Father Pleads to Keep Sick Daughter Alive and Take Her to Israel - Ten GOP Senators Ask Biden to Intervene in Fixsler Case

CLICK ON ABOVE IMAGES TO ENLARGE

LONDON (Reuters) 

The father of a 2-year-old Israeli girl who has been in hospital in Britain with a serious brain injury since birth pleaded to be allowed to take his daughter to Israel, after a U.K. court ruled her life-sustaining care should be withdrawn.

“I want to keep my daughter, I want to have the ability to go to Israel and take my daughter with me. Under U.K. law, she’s an Israeli citizen, not a U.K. one,” Avraham Fixsler told Reuters.

“We waited a long time for a child, when she was born she was oxygen deprived and that caused brain damage.”

He said he had Israeli doctors who were willing to come to Manchester, where his daughter Alta is in hospital, and give the family their options for treating her.

“We believe she is not suffering and we want to have the right to keep her,” he said.

A spokesperson for Israeli Health Minister Yuli Edelstein confirmed to Reuters in Yerushalayim that the minister had appealed to the British government last week on the family’s behalf to say that Israel wished to take her in for treatment.

The High Court in London ruled on May 28 that it was in Alta’s best interests for her life sustaining treatment to be withdrawn, and that she had a catastrophic brain injury from which she will not recover and for which no treatment could improve her condition.

Her family had told the court their Jewish faith means they cannot agree with any course of action that would bring their child’s death closer.

They will learn later on Tuesday whether they have the right to appeal the ruling.

“We want to do the best for her … Let me take my daughter and go to Israel,” said Fixsler.

The dispute resembles the case of Charlie Gard, a young British boy who became the subject of a battle between his parents and doctors over whether he should be taken to the United States for experimental treatment.

The harrowing legal case prompted a global debate over who has the moral right to decide the fate of a sick child.

Britain’s courts, after hearing a wealth of medical evidence, ruled that it would go against Charlie’s best interests to have the treatment and he died in 2017.

 

British court rules that haredi Orthodox couple’s 2-year-old daughter must be taken off life support

 

“Iceberg, Goldberg, Rosenberg, they’re all the same to me.” - Goldberg made several false reports of child abuse, neglect, and attempted murder of the youngster to Fort Lee police over a three-week period in March, the complaint obtained by Daily Voice says.

 

A Jewish pilot and Chinese pilot are flying together for the 1st time.

 

An hour into the flight, the Jewish pilot says to his Chinese counterpart “I don’t like the Chinese.”

Stunned, the Chinese pilot replies “Why don’t you like the Chinese?”

“Well” says the Jew, “the Chinese bombed Pearl Harbor.”

Even more stunned, he replies ”The Chinese didn’t bomb Pearl Harbor! It was the Japanese!”

“Well, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, they’re all the same to me.” says the Jew.

The Chinese pilot is seething at this, and after a while he turns to his Jewish counterpart to say “I don’t like the Jews.”

“What?” asks the Jew. “Why don’t you like Jews?”

“Well” he says, “The Jews sank the Titanic.”

The Jewish pilot scoffs at this, “The Jews didn’t sink the Titanic! An Iceberg sank the Titanic!”

“Well” he replies, “Iceberg, Goldberg, Rosenberg, they’re all the same to me.”

 

Long Island Man Accused Of Threatening Police, Pretending To Be Abused Child, Authorities Say

Bradley Goldberg Photo Credit: Bergen County Sheriff

A man accused of threatening several members of law enforcement and the Jewish community on Long Island pretended to be an abused 11-year-old as part of another relentless harassment campaign against police in Fort Lee, New Jersey, authorities said.

Bradley Goldberg, age 47, of Cedarhurst, used a voice modifier and untraceable “spoof” numbers as part of the assault, a police complaint charges.

Goldberg made several false reports of child abuse, neglect, and attempted murder of the youngster to Fort Lee police over a three-week period in March, the complaint obtained by Daily Voice says.

Even though police determined that the accusations were bogus -- and told him so -- Goldberg continued to call the department "multiple times daily” and email them with more false accusations, the complaint prepared by Detective Nick Orta says.

The forensic certified public accountant continued the behavior -- threatening to call up to "one thousand times per day" -- despite repeated requests that he stop, it says.

He also reportedly called police requesting a welfare check at the victim’s address, despite a court order of no contact with the victim through others.

Goldberg also "threatened to commit a crime against members of the Fort Lee Police Department" while making “derogatory comments about officers with the department, [advising] them on how they can hurt themselves and making “several comments about members of their families,” the complaint charges.

Goldberg had a prior record of arrests for assault, hate crimes, aggravated harassment, stalking, obstruction, menacing and criminal contempt when he was arrested in May in Nassau County.

Authorities there said he’d waged a campaign of harassment and threats of violence against police and members of the Jewish community over a year and a half.

Goldberg made more than 1,000 calls to officers and detectives in Manhasset, Jewish community leaders in Port Washington and Great Neck, and attorneys who’d previously represented him, they alleged.

In one call, they said, he identified himself and declared "my new goal is to have one of the Sixth Precinct officers blow their brains out and I want to see the body as proof."

Goldberg was extradited to New Jersey late last week to face charges of making a false report involving critical infrastructure, falsely incriminating another, cyber harassment, and stalking in connection with the Fort Lee complaint.

He’s remained in the Bergen County Jail since then, awaiting a first appearance in Central Judicial Processing Court in Hackensack.

 

https://dailyvoice.com/new-york/nassau/police-fire/long-island-man-accused-of-threatening-police-pretending-to-be-abused-child-authorities-say/810419/

The Known & Exposed Chinese Danger To The Free World Began With Bernie Schwartz And Bill Clinton! Nobody Cared! (except me)

 

Clinton Defends China Satellite Waiver

White House delivers papers to Congress in support of the deal

WASHINGTON (May 22) -- President Bill Clinton on Friday defended a controversial satellite deal with China, even as White House officials delivered documents to the House International Relations Committee about the arrangement.

The president said the deal to launch U.S. satellites on rockets owned by other nations was "correct" and "based on what I thought was in the national interest and supportive of our national security."

"There was absolutely nothing done to transfer any technology inappropriately to the Chinese as a result of this decision," Clinton said. "I believe it was in the national interest and I can assure you it was handled in the routine course of business, consistent with the 10-year-old policy."

The White House backed up that claim by releasing about 400 pages of declassified documents claiming the presidential waiver was consistent with U.S. policy and had been recommended by the president's national security adviser, the State Department and the Pentagon.

White House legislative liaison Mara Rudman, accompanied by at least one White House lawyer, delivered the documents to the House International Relations Committee Friday morning. Rudman was carrying two folders of papers as she arrived at the committee office, but made no comment.

Congressional critics, both Democrats and Republicans, say the Chinese may have had access to sophisticated U.S. satellite and missile technology during an investigation into a failed launch attempt on a Chinese rocket in 1996.

And Republicans have accused Clinton of jeopardizing national security by granting the waiver to please a high-dollar Democratic donor.

A spokesman told CNN the committee does not expect the papers to include a pivotal document from the Defense Department, purportedly linking a possibly illegal transfer of technology with a cooperative investigation among China and two American defense contractors, Loral Space and Communications and Hughes Electronics.

Rep. Ben Gilman (R-N.Y.) hinted the documents may not be as exculpatory as the White House indicated. "Let me just say that some of the documents do raise troubling questions that will have to be pursued," Gilman said. "They make clear that the president was informed that Loral may have contributed technology to China's ballistic missile program before he decided to grant Loral a waiver on February 18th of this year to permit them to export yet another satellite to China."

But how much do we really know?

It's a fact Loral Space and Communications hired the Chinese to launch one of their satellites two years ago because Chinese rocket launches are relatively cheap. Technically, that is an export of a U.S. satellite to China.

But Loral says the Chinese never got their hands on the satellite itself. And Pentagon officials confirm sensitive technology was encased in a metal "black box" and watched over from factory to launch pad by Department of Defense employees.

There has been bipartisan support for such launches. President Ronald Reagan first initiated the policy 10 years ago. And President George Bush approved nine while Clinton has approved 11, according to the Congressional Research Service.

But concerns have heated up. To launch satellites, China used "Long March" boosters, the same ones they use for intercontinental nuclear missiles, some said to be aimed at U.S. cities.

They weren't very good. The one carrying Loral's satellite blew up 30 seconds after launch on Feb. 15, 1996, costing Loral's insurance companies about $200 million.

Afterward Loral admits it gave the Chinese a written report about the cause of the rocket failure, without official clearance. A Pentagon office concluded in a still-secret report that "United States national security has been harmed," according to government officials. And Loral confirms it is now under investigation by a federal grand jury as a result.

And one House International Relations Committee source, speaking to CNN on background, said the committee plans to focus its investigation on this cooperation.

Loral's chairman Bernard Schwartz denies Loral did anything illegal. In its own defense, Loral says Chinese engineers found the problem -- the rocket failure was caused by bad solder joints -- without Loral's help. And they say "no 'secret' or 'classified' information was ever discussed with the Chinese or included in any reports provided to the Chinese."

Privately, Pentagon officials minimize the affair. One told CNN that the alleged harm to national security was "not significant or substantial ... about a one or two on a scale of ten." 

Moneyline Interview: Loral CEO Bernard Schwartz Tells His Side Of The Missile Technology Controversy

Aired May 20, 1998 - 7:00 p.m. ET

DOBBS: Now you know better than anyone just how sensitive this issue has become. The speaker of the House calling for an investigation. The Justice Department investigating it. Much of this before the grand jury. Can you say to us tonight whether or not Loral in any way exported technology that would not be in the national interest, i.e. would be helpful to the Chinese missile program?

SCHWARTZ: Yes, I can say categorically that Loral did not violate the export control rules, neither the letter or the spirit. Everything we do is under license. We've been in this business -- the space business -- defense business for over 25 years. We know the rules, and we follow them.

DOBBS: Why then did the Pentagon find that the export of such technology was not in the national interest?

SCHWARTZ: I don't know that they did that. No allegations have been made. No accusations about Loral people -- wrongdoing has been made. So I don't know how to defend that question.

DOBBS: Well, let me -- in May of 1997, the Pentagon found that scientists from both Hughes and Loral had turned over expertise that significantly improved the reliability of China's nuclear missiles and that national security had been harmed, and that promoted then the criminal investigation.

SCHWARTZ: Lou, we have not seen that report. We've heard that report in the press, but like so many other things, that may have been a misstatement in the media. I can tell you that we have not seen that. No allegations, as I say, have been made. We have been cooperating totally with the government agencies here. It's in our best interest, and it's the proper thing to do.

 READ ENTIRE INTERVIEW:

https://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/05/21/interview.schwartz/

https://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/05/22/china.money/