“Where I come from, it’s really stuffed under the rug, though it’s starting to change,” she said matter-of-factly. Her wide, blue eyes stared straight ahead. She cited the case of another young woman in her community who accused her father of molesting her. “The whole community shut her up; they told her to leave in silence, so she left for Israel”

 

Orthodox Survivor Of Sex Abuse Exposes Traumas In New Film

You wouldn’t believe she’s only 20.

With no film schooling or experience, Baltimore native Miryam Rabinowitz has thrown herself into a film project that tells the story of sexual abuse — or rather, its lonely, complex aftermath.

“Still Feeling” tells the story of Yuval Goldenberg, a young woman who was abused during her childhood in an Israeli national religious community. Goldenberg, no longer Orthodox, is a singer and composer now. With an earthy voice, standing rather awkwardly, eyes half-closed, she lets song tell her pain.

Rabinowitz is a survivor of sexual abuse herself — and a graduate of the ultra-Orthodox Bais Yaakov girls school system.

“Most people around me don’t acknowledge the fact that I was abused at all,” she told me in an interview. “I have close friends who don’t acknowledge it. My film trailer was the first time I said it publicly. I’m making this documentary for my friends and family to be able to say, ‘This is for you to know how to talk about it with me.’

“I know it’s hard for people to process. When someone says they were raped by a family member, you’ll never be able to understand what that feels like, but you do understand that basic feeling of shame and suffering. It’s by empathy — through art and music — that we can come to understand another’s pain, rather than through intellectual understanding.”

In her forthcoming film, shot mostly in Tel Aviv, Rabinowitz shows Goldenberg talking about her music and her dissociation, as she bounces between her Orthodox family and her artist friends, many of whom are also survivors of abuse.

“Don’t assume that people are normal and happy,” Rabinowitz said. “My friend and I went along the same path. We wore the same school uniform. I went home and I was abused. She went home and she wasn’t. We lived parallel lives, except mine was covered in soot. I looked the same, but I may not have acted the same. Understand that I was in an upside-down world.”

Her film, now in postproduction, is a window into this world of childhood trauma.

“Where I come from, it’s really stuffed under the rug, though it’s starting to change,” she said matter-of-factly. Her wide, blue eyes stared straight ahead. She cited the case of another young woman in her community who accused her father of molesting her. “The whole community shut her up; they told her to leave in silence, so she left for Israel,” Rabinowitz said. “People say, ‘She’s crazy’; no one believed her. Yeah, she’s crazy. If your father is lying on top of you every night, suffocating you and raping you, of course you’re crazy. When you survive abuse, there’s always someone else in your head. You see it in Yuval.”

Rabinowitz didn’t go into too much detail about her own story, but years of abuse, and her subsequent turn to substance abuse, landed her in Retorno, an Israeli religious drug rehab center.

When she returned to the States, “straightened out” and “frum again,” her past as a vulnerable young woman continued to haunt her. When she was 18, a community member drove her home from an event and said he had to stop at his house to “get something,” inviting her in.

“I was 18 years old, and he was 70 years old, a very prominent person in the community,” she said. “He brought me to his house, and he did something to me.” After pausing, she continued, “When he drove me home, he said, ‘Wow, the things you make me do…. ’ I told a domestic abuse organization about what happened, and they told me, ‘If you go to the police, you have nothing on him; no one will believe you, and he will bury you.’”

That was the moment that she realized something needs to change. “I would be speaking to religious kids from different communities, from around the world, and everyone had a story, everyone knows someone who is affected by this,” she said. “We need everyone to finally be open and connect all those stories to make a difference.”

She rattles off harrowing story after story, name after name, with unnerving poise.

“My focus is not on the perpetrators. So instead I’ve turned to film to tell my story. My goal is to use Yuval’s story to de-stigmatize the issue of child sexual abuse. I hope to motivate people who have not experienced this trauma to take action to help victims.”

This story "Orthodox Survivor Of Sex Abuse Exposes Traumas In New Film" was written by Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt.

https://forward.com/life/faith/379521/orthodox-survivor-of-sex-abuse-exposes-traumas-in-new-film/?fbclid=IwAR2wEYLRSro7xeU4oWycGSgT8BzzERwuQNKC6F9P12prEBinVZ0-46DMLKE

"These Jewish, false "profits", anti-Christian, anti-God… Listen, she is a witch, she is a jezebel, she is a God-hating whore of Zionism. I hope that God breaks her teeth out and she dies. She is a wicked person and she is, like, the perfect representation of religious Judaism."

 

Florida Pastor Calls On God To Kill Comedian Sarah Silverman For Being ‘A Witch’

42 Comments

 

Incitement to violence: Florida Pastor Adam Fannin calls on God to kill comedian Sarah Silverman because she is “a witch,” and “a Jezebel.”
Law and Crime reports:

Sarah Silverman on Thursday Tweeted a video clip of a Florida pastor delivering a vitriolic diatribe against the comedian to his congregation. In it, the pastor says he prays for her “untimely death” and adds that Silverman’s premature death would be the work of God. Silverman included a caption with the clip which read, “If I get murdered, start here,” and later wrote that the pastor “is going to get [her] killed.”

Silverman tweeted the following:

This is Adam Fannin of the Stedfast Baptist Church in Florida and he is going to get me killed.

Silverman should be alarmed. Fannin delivered a wildly anti-Semitic sermon in which he raged against the comedian for something she said in her comedy special “Jesus is Magic.”
In his sermon the raging baptist pastor declared:

These Jewish, false "profits", anti-Christian, anti-God… They’re willing to put Jesus to death again! Have you heard of this comedian Sarah Silverman? You guys know what I’m talking about? She brags about it! ‘I’d do it again!’ Listen, she is a witch, she is a jezebel, she is a God-hating whore of Zionism. I hope that God breaks her teeth out and she dies. She is a wicked person and she is, like, the perfect representation of religious Judaism.

Pastor Fannin continued:

I pray that God would give her an untimely death, and it would be evident that it’s at the hand of God. It would be obvious that God would judge her. I pray for the day.

Watch the video  Friendly Atheist:
Concerning Pastor Fannin, Newsweek reports:

Adam Fannin, formerly of the literalist Stedfast Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida, is the preacher in the disturbing video.

He is now part of the Law of Liberty Baptist Church, also in Jacksonville, following a recent scandal involving Stedfast that saw its leader admit to using sex workers.

Bottom line: Florida Pastor Adam Fannin calls on God to kill comedian Sarah Silverman because she is “a witch,” and “a Jezebel.”

Florida Pastor Calls On God To Kill Comedian Sarah Silverman For Being ‘A Witch’ (Image via Twitter)

 https://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2019/08/florida-pastor-calls-on-god-to-kill-comedian-sarah-silverman-for-being-a-witch/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Imagine+No+Religion&utm_content=44

Jews of All Stripes --- Don't Get Too Comfortable: Vile, Diseased and Dangerous anti-Semitism Exists in Various Forms and Methodology!

He posed as a righteous Jewish convert for 19 years. Then he wrote a 2,000-page anti-Semitic screed.

by Henry Abramson 

 

Johann Andreas Eisenmenger published “Judaism Unmasked,” one of the most noxious and highly influential anti-Semitic works ever written.

NEW YORK (JTA) — “Eisenmenger belonged to the class of insects which sucks poison even out of flowers,” the 19th-century Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz wrote.

Graetz was referring to Johann Andreas Eisenmenger, a young 17th-century scholar from Mannheim, Germany, who dedicated some 19 years of his life to mastering the Talmud and presenting himself to the Jewish community as a prospective “ger tzedek,” or righteous convert. He learned Hebrew, Aramaic and even Arabic during his intellectual journey, and read the whole Talmud roughly three times.

And then, in 1700, Eisenmenger published “Judaism Unmasked,” one of the most noxious and highly influential anti-Semitic works ever written. 

During the Nine Days leading up to Tisha b’Av, during which Jews commemorate the saddest moments in Jewish history from the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem to the deportation of the Jews of Warsaw, we again have witnessed Eisenmenger’s contemporary descendants: gunmen who publish paranoid, hateful “manifestos” before embarking on horrific acts of  random violence. Those specifically targeting Jews, such as the shooters in Poway and Pittsburgh, often rely, consciously or otherwise, on the work of Johann Andreas Eisenmenger.

Spanning 2,000 pages over two brick-like volumes, “Entdecktes Judenthums” is an exhaustive survey of every possible passage from the Talmud that could be distorted to reflect badly on Jews and Judaism.

His verbose subtitle thoroughly described his intent, which was to prove how “the stubborn Jews frightfully blaspheme and dishonor the Holy Trinity … and despise and curse to the uttermost extreme the whole of Christianity.” He also promised “ridiculous and amusing stories” to boot, “written for the honest information of all Christians.” 

Eisenmenger’s purpose and even methodology were hardly new. Jew-haters have been mining the Talmud for talking points since the 13th century, when the apostate Nicholas Donin first denounced it before Pope Innocent III. Few, however, were able to penetrate the depths of this massive, ancient text written in a mixture of highly coded Aramaic and Hebrew. 

But Eisenmenger was different. A man of considerable academic skills (he ultimately taught at the University of Heidelberg), Eisenmenger realized that the only way to seriously understand the Talmud was to become immersed in the world of the yeshiva, a world closed to non-Jews by custom and even Jewish law. To achieve his dark purpose, Eisenmenger had to present himself as a genuine spiritual seeker, perhaps modeling himself as a righteous convert like Onkelos, whose translation of the Torah into Aramaic enjoys primacy over even Rashi, or Bodo-Elazar, who ignored the anti-Semitic environment of medieval Europe to adopt the ancient faith.

Eisenmenger began his lifelong deception in 1680 at the age of 24. By the time he was ready to bring his malicious book to print, Eisenmenger could count many rabbis among his teachers, including the prolific David ben Aryeh Lieb of Lida, Lithuania — then chief Ashkenazi rabbi of Amsterdam.

News of Eisenmenger’s colossal betrayal leaked out before “Judaism Unmasked” was released. The Jewish community rapidly mobilized to prevent its distribution, persuading Emperor Leopold I that its publication might ignite the popular violence that had plagued the region in 1699. Eisenmenger protested and a lengthy court battle ensued. The Jewish community offered 12,000 florins (roughly $5,000) to cover his costs if he would withdraw publication. Surprisingly, Eisenmenger seemed agreeable, but demanded 30,000. Negotiations were cut short by Eisenmenger’s sudden death in 1704, at age 50, of a stroke. 

King Friedrich Wilhelm I of nearby Prussia circumvented the emperor by printing a second edition of 3,000 copies in 1711 in Berlin (although the title page listed “Koenigsburg” as the place of publication to reinforce that it was published outside the jurisdiction of Leopold I). For the past three centuries, from Stehelin’s English translation to the ugliest parts of the web, anti-Semites have relied on Eisenmenger’s distorted research to promote hatred.

Despite his incredibly profound impact on 300 years of anti-Semitic ideology, a shroud of scholarly silence descended over the man. With the exception of the great professor Jacob Katz’s exhaustive analysis of Eisenmenger’s methodology (Eisenmenger strove for accuracy in citation and translation, but criminally distorted the meaning of the passages in context with unacceptably tendentious commentary to promote awful lies like the infamous blood libel), the most extensive biography available is an impressive but brief study posted to Wikipedia by a 12th-grader in Braunschweig, Germany. 

As a historian of the Jewish people, writing during the Nine Days, I find myself awed by Eisenmenger’s pathological achievement for two reasons. First, whatever we think about this sick individual, he devoted himself to an overwhelming tour de force of twisted scholarship: nearly 20 years of solitary toil, exhaustively infiltrating an alien community in order to produce such a massive publication. 

Second, like Graetz, it is hard not to reflect on how Eisenmenger was “able to suck poison even out of flowers,” twisting and distorting the Talmud in such a hateful manner. Such, I suppose, is the power of Amalek, the ancient, eternal enemy of the Jewish people.

Henry Abramson is a specialist in Jewish history and thought who currently serves as a Dean of Touro College in Brooklyn, New York. 

https://www.jta.org/2019/08/06/opinion/he-posed-as-a-righteous-jewish-convert-for-19-years-then-he-wrote-a-2000-page-anti-semitic-screed?utm_source=JTA%20Maropost&utm_campaign=JTA&utm_medium=email&mpweb=1161-12610-21723

Let's Talk Crazzzyyyy.....

Abuse Victim’s 3 Billboards Called for Stronger Laws. Then the State Showed Up.

 

Because she rented the billboards, Kat Sullivan may face more than $40,000 in fines for not registering as a lobbyist.

A billboard rented by Kat Sullivan, who said she was sexually abused and then raped by a former teacher when she was a student at the Emma Willard School in Troy, N.Y., in the 1990s.

When Kat Sullivan rented a billboard last year in upstate New York to call for stronger protections against child sex abusers, she believed she was engaging in the democratic process, using her own time and money to make her voice as an abuse survivor heard.

So she was shocked when state regulators afterward sent her a letter ordering her to register as a lobbyist.

New York State defines a lobbyist as, in part, someone who spends money to influence lawmakers. But Ms. Sullivan, a registered nurse, has argued that she was exercising her rights as a citizen.

She is now locked in a battle with the state’s ethics commission, which has warned that she could be guilty of a misdemeanor and fined more than $40,000 if she continues to refuse to register.

Ms. Sullivan’s case is unusual; few unpaid advocates spend more than $5,000 on an issue, the annual threshold for registering as a lobbyist in New York. Ms. Sullivan has said that she spent $14,000 on three billboards, plus about $2,000 on a website.

Kat Sullivan has said that she spent $14,000 on three billboards, plus about $2,000 on a website.CreditValerie Chiang for The New York Times

But the case illuminates a larger conundrum facing lawmakers across the country: Who counts as a lobbyist in the age of social media and renewed grass-roots involvement, when it is easier than ever for people to make themselves heard? 

New York revised its lobbying guidelines this year to explicitly include grass-roots campaigns as well as meetings with officials, and to define when social media counts as lobbying. In California, lawmakers are weighing a proposal to increase regulation of online advertisements about legislation. On the federal level, where only direct contact with lawmakers must be reported, activists have pushed for disclosure of grass-roots activity, too.

“Almost every jurisdiction I can think of is grappling at some level with how much is covered and at what threshold,” Beth Rotman, the director of the Money in Politics and Ethics program at Common Cause, a government reform group, said of social media and grass-roots mobilization.

She called the dilemma the “million-dollar question” for ethics officials.

“At a certain smaller threshold, these activities are not the same as paid lobbyists,” Ms. Rotman said. “The challenge becomes how we as a democracy track this when it becomes more than small dollar.”

Ms. Sullivan’s activism stemmed from her experience as a student at the Emma Willard School in Troy, N.Y., where she says she was raped by a teacher in the 1990s, then forced out by administrators.

She did not speak publicly about her story until 2016. In response, the school commissioned a report that found numerous instances of abuse over the decades, including by a teacher, Scott Sargent, who was later fired for sexually abusing a student. That student was Ms. Sullivan.

The school settled with Ms. Sullivan, and Ms. Sullivan said she drew on those funds to pay for the billboards.

She rented them for one month last year to urge passage of the Child Victims Act, a proposal to extend the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse. The billboards — one in New York, near Ms. Sullivan’s former school, and one each in Massachusetts and Connecticut — criticized New York’s years of failure to pass the bill and directed observers to her website.

Ms. Sullivan said she shouldn’t be labeled as a lobbyist because she is representing herself and not a client

 

She also hired a pilot to fly over the State Capitol with a plane trailing a sign about the Child Victims Act.

Several months later, New York’s Joint Commission on Public Ethics, or Jcope, sent Ms. Sullivan a letter noting her failure to register as a lobbyist, citing her spending. Registration involves paperwork and a $200 fee.

But Ms. Sullivan balked. She told regulators that because only one of the billboards had been in New York, and because it was digital — and therefore showed some images that did not mention the Child Victims Act — she had not exceeded $5,000. 

In an interview, she declined to say how much she believed she had spent.

But, Ms. Sullivan said, even if she had reached the spending limit, she opposed being called a lobbyist.

She was representing only herself, not a client, she said. The state defines a lobbyist as someone “retained, employed or designated by any client to engage in lobbying.”

Nor did she stand to benefit financially from the Child Victims Act’s passage, as she had already settled her abuse allegations. (The bill failed last year but passed in January under the new Democratic-led State Legislature.)

“I just question how I, as a victim, am not able to say, ‘This is the best idea I’ve seen to be able to close these loopholes,’” Ms. Sullivan said. 

“I am not the problem with corruption with New York State politics.” 

The dispute escalated this month, when Jcope sent Ms. Sullivan a letter warning that the panel could open a formal investigation and fine her for as much as three times more than she spent. 

A Jcope spokesman declined to comment on any possible investigations. But he said the law requires disclosure about how much people are spending to persuade lawmakers.

“We have procedures for handling potential unregistered lobbying and treat all people and entities allegedly involved in that unregistered lobbying the same way,” the spokesman, Walter McClure, said in a statement. “We will enforce the law and pursue the required disclosure.”

Still, ethics experts acknowledged the challenge of disentangling lobbying, activism and normal speech.

New York’s law leaves a loophole for individuals who spend copiously on a campaign without tying it to a specific bill or call to action, Ms. Rotman said. If Ms. Sullivan had not identified the Child Victims Act and only mentioned sexual abuse broadly, she would not have fallen under the state’s definition of lobbying.

New York’s law also does not account for stature. Ms. Sullivan compared her efforts to those by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the leader of the Archdiocese of New York, which opposed the Child Victims Act for years. Cardinal Dolan is not considered a lobbyist, but Ms. Sullivan said his influence far outweighed hers, even after she rented billboards. (The archdiocese also pays registered lobbyists.)

“They can just walk right into the Capitol and say, ‘I want to talk to Cuomo,’” she said of church leaders, referring to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. “You can’t compete.”

But even relatively unknown activists can now shape public opinion in hard-to-measure ways, using social media.

Ms. Sullivan’s billboards earned stories in multiple news outlets, and she has also amplified her outrage on Facebook.

Still, even as modes of exerting influence have proliferated, regulators should be judicious with the label of lobbyist, said Susan Lerner, the director of Common Cause’s New York arm. Some experts have argued that overregulation strangles grass-roots activism.

“There’s been a long tradition of Americans being concerned about lobbyists,” Ms. Lerner said. But “there is a history here of a distinction between a paid lobbyist and a passionate citizen. And our laws properly should reflect that.”

But Alex Camarda, the senior policy adviser at Reinvent Albany, a government watchdog group, said the state’s money threshold was an “imperfect” but reasonable standard.

And, he added, the label of lobbyist should not carry such a stigma, as lobbyists provide expertise and diverse perspectives to lawmakers.

“That’s part of the democratic process,” Mr. Camarda said, “even though it has a negative connotation in some circumstances.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/31/nyregion/lobbying-billboard-new-york.html

A grandfather telling stories to a young boy may just nudge that boy to one day write his own stories, ones that help ease the burden on all our minds. An especially caring teacher may infect a little girl with an engineering passion that later gives her the vitality to make the breakthrough that permanently changes our relationship to outer space. And of course, both that boy and that girl may just inspire millions of other people, who may inspire many millions more, in a long, unbroken chain of interactions...

The purpose of life is right in front of us: It’s to create a reality we want to inhabit — to reach towards the better end of our conscious experience. At each moment, in every second of life, we are given a choice about how we want to conduct ourselves in this world, and though it might not always seem like it, each of these choices are of consequence. They each interact with culture to give it a new form; a form that we are responsible for creating by either doing what is right or doing what is wrong in that specific moment.

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”


https://medium.com/personal-growth/the-purpose-of-life-is-right-in-front-of-you-c95f79d989ba

Think you're a bigshot? Got to speak at an Agudah Convention? At a Lakewood asifa? Got a plaque at the Siyum HaShas?

What percentage of the universe does earth take up?

Julius Bier Kirkegaard, PhD Candidate, University of Cambridge

 

Anyway, let's just say that by universe you mean "the observable universe". The radius of this beast is 45.7 billion light years whereas earth only has a radius of 6.371 kilometres. Actually you don't even have to look that up, since wolframalpha already knows it.

Volume scales as radius cubed, so: (radius of earth)^3/(radius of universe)^3 =3⋅10−60

or
0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000003 %

 

The first case involves Malka Leifer, a former ultra-Orthodox girls’ school principal charged in Australia with 74 counts of child sex abuse. The police announced in February that they were investigating Litzman on suspicion that he had pressured employees in his office to alter the conclusions of psychiatric evaluations that had deemed Leifer fit for extradition...

Police recommend Litzman stand trial for bribery, aiding alleged pedophile

 

Deputy health minister and UTJ party head could be charged over pressuring employees to prevent extradition of Malka Leifer to face 74 counts of child sex abuse in Australia

Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman at the ceremony for the opening of a new branch of his Agudath Israel party, ahead of the upcoming elections

Police recommended on Tuesday that Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman be indicted on charges of fraud and breach of trust for using his office to illicitly provide assistance to an alleged serial sex abuser, as well as on a separate bribery charge for helping to prevent the closure of a food business that his own ministry had deemed unsanitary.

The first case involves Malka Leifer, a former ultra-Orthodox girls’ school principal charged in Australia with 74 counts of child sex abuse. The police announced in February that they were investigating Litzman on suspicion that he had pressured employees in his office to alter the conclusions of psychiatric evaluations that had deemed Leifer fit for extradition.

In their statement, police said that the investigation, conducted by the Lahav 433 anti-corruption unit and the National Fraud Investigation Unit, had found enough evidence to put Litzman on trial over his involvement in the Leifer case, as well as for intervening to help several other sex offenders obtain improved conditions, including prison furloughs and other benefits, by pressuring state psychiatrists and prisons service officials.

In the second case, police said that Litzman attempted to influence officials in the Health Ministry in order to prevent the closure of a food business whose owner “he is close to” — a closure that had been ordered due to “serious sanitary findings found that led to the sickness of a number of people who ate from its products.”

In this February 27, 2018, file photo, Malka Leifer, center, is brought to a courtroom in Jerusalem.

Kan reported that breakthroughs in the police’s case came from the testimonies of various state psychiatrists. One of them told investigators, “I’m just a bureaucrat. A senior minister is sitting in front of me [making requests]. I know my place and I know his place and what is expected of me.”

Several psychiatrists told police that they feared they’d be fired if they didn’t follow Litzman’s orders.

Litzman, who possesses many authorities of a full minister despite serving as a deputy, denied any wrongdoing, maintaining in a response to the police recommendation that his office has a “clear open-door policy for assisting members of the public. This is without discrimination between populations and without clarifying the status of those who call for assistance. The deputy minister expressed confidence that no charges would ultimately be filed.”

In the wake of the police recommendation, it will be up to Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit to determine whether or not to indict.

Dassi Erlich, a Leifer accuser who launched a campaign to extradite her former principal back to Australia, said in a statement Tuesday, “We are feeling so grateful that the questions we continually raised through the #BringLeiferBack campaign resulted in one more step to achieving justice.”

In May, Channel 13 news reported that Litzman helped at least 10 serious sex offenders obtain improved conditions, including home visits and other benefits, by pressuring state psychiatrists and prisons service officials.

Earlier in the year, the TV channel had reported that police were investigating suspicions that Litzman and his chief of staff pressured a psychiatrist, Moshe Birger, to ensure that another imprisoned sex offender close to Litzman’s Gur sect of Hasidim was placed in a rehabilitation program. Participation in the program can lead to furloughs and early release from prison.

Police said Tuesday that they had not found sufficient evidence to prosecute Litzman on his suspected assistance to other alleged pedophiles.

Leifer, a former school principal who is wanted for alleged sex crimes in Australia, is known to have links to the Gur community, having once taught at a school in Israel affiliated with the branch.

Protesters demonstrate on March 13, 2019, outside the Jerusalem District Court during extradition hearings for Malka Leifer, a former girls school principal wanted for sexual abuse in Australia.

A Justice Ministry official told The Times of Israel in February that police had recordings of Litzman and officials in his office speaking to Health Ministry employees and pressing them to act on Leifer’s behalf.

In 2000, Leifer was recruited from Israel to work at the Adass Israel ultra-Orthodox girls school in Melbourne. When allegations of sexual abuse against her began to surface eight years later, members of the school board purchased the mother of eight a red-eye plane ticket back to Israel, allowing her to avoid being charged.

After authorities in Melbourne filed charges against her, Australia officially filed an extradition request in 2012. Leifer was arrested in Israel two years later, but released to house arrest shortly thereafter. Judges deemed her mentally unfit to stand trial and eventually removed all restrictions against her, concluding that she was too ill to even leave her bed.

Jerusalem District Psychiatrist Jacob Charnes

She was rearrested in February 2018 following a police undercover operation that cast doubts on her claims regarding her mental state, and has remained in custody since. The operation was launched after the Jewish Community Watch NGO hired private investigators who placed hidden cameras in the Emmanuel settlement, a Haredi community in the northern West Bank, where Leifer had been living, which showed the alleged sex abuser roaming around the town without any apparent difficulty.
 
Despite the seemingly damning footage, the trial has dragged on for an additional year, as the court continues to debate her mental fitness. The Jerusalem district psychiatrist responsible for evaluating Leifer, Dr. Jacob Charnes, has changed his mind three times regarding whether Leifer was fit for extradition, ultimately signing off an a legal opinion in which state psychiatrists found her fit for extradition.

However, when the psychiatrist was cross-examined by the defense on the evaluation late last year, he told the court that he recommended an additional evaluation of Leifer be carried out — a proposal that both sides have rejected.

A legal official told The Times of Israel that police suspected Charnes changed his medical conclusion after being contacted by officials in Litzman’s office. Though Charnes has been interrogated under caution in the case against the deputy health minister, police on Tuesday said they did not recommend he be tried.

The Jerusalem District Court will hand down a final decision regarding Leifer’s mental fitness for an extradition hearing on September 23. The Times of Israel learned last month that a separate court appointed medical board is slated to officially concluce that Leifer has been feigning mental illness, in a ruling that would likely impact the Jerusalem District Court’s decision.

Jewish Community Watch founder of director Meyer Seewald said in a Tuesday statement, “Our private investigation in 2017 only clarified what was obvious to so many: that Malka Leifer was feigning mental illness to avoid extradition. Considering she was doing very little to hide her ruse, it was apparent that Leifer was being protected by very influential people. The police recommendation clarifies that it was allegedly Litzman and his office that were diligently working to make sure Malka Leifer’s victims never received justice.”

Seewald called on senior lawmakers to ensure that Litzman is not made a member of the next cabinet after the elections on September 17.


https://www.timesofisrael.com/police-recommend-litzman-stand-trial-for-bribery-aiding-alleged-pedophiles/?utm_source=The+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=daily-edition-2019-08-06&utm_medium=email

 

“It is going to be a cold day in hell when I step back into a Baptist church.” --- When Bible verses, prayer, hymns, faith, God-talk and church rituals are perverted into weapons for sexual assault and then hammered into shields for church cover-ups, they become neurologically networked with trauma, and this renders them polluted and often toxic for the survivors. This is the truth of the damage done by a faith group that enables abuse and turns a blind eye to clergy-predators in their midst.

Clergy sex abuse: the damage done when faith is weaponized (substitute out "church" for "yeshiva" or "shul"...)

“Get your hand off me!” I wanted to yell. But I didn’t.

More than a month after the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in Birmingham, I am still processing something that happened there. After the For Such a Time as This Rally, abuse survivors and advocates gathered at a coffee house to decompress. It was a warm-hearted event, filled with a sense of “beloved community,” and I felt gratitude to everyone who was there. There was even a lovely candle-lighting ceremony honoring me for my years of advocacy work against sexual abuse and cover-ups in the SBC.

Then, as the evening drew to an end, one of the event’s organizers called on a prominent Southern Baptist woman to offer a closing prayer. Suddenly, the woman was standing right over me, and with me still seated, she put her hand firmly on my shoulder and launched into an out-loud prayer for me.
I froze.

“I felt powerless, unsafe, targeted, disconnected and manipulated.”

Ironically, this was a woman who has written extensively about sexual abuse in general and is a survivor herself, though in a different context – i.e., she is not a survivor of sexual abuse by clergy nor a survivor of religious institutional cover-up.

I’m sure her prayer was well-intentioned. Yet I felt the urgent need to shove her hand off me and run. I came pretty close to doing just that. But I restrained myself, and amid the panic of my hyper-triggered brain and body, I tried to figure out what to do.

I thought about standing to my feet and walking out of the room. But she was looming over me so closely that to even rise from my chair would have required pushing her aside.

I felt trapped. Trapped by the weapon of her hand-on-the-shoulder, wanting-all-to-hear prayer. Trapped by my own good-girl, don’t-make-waves upbringing. Trapped by past trauma.

I felt powerless, unsafe, targeted, disconnected and manipulated. In short, I felt mightily triggered.
My self-anger and self-loathing went from zero to 100 in a split-second, and I felt myself getting short of breath. It was as though a sink-hole had suddenly swallowed up the normal me, and I was suffocating.

So, despite my instinct to shove aside her hand and yell, I focused on breathing. I prayed that her sword of a prayer would be short and dull, and that I wouldn’t bleed out completely right in front of everyone. I stayed passive and quiet.

Now, here I am weeks later, still kicking myself for my failure to honor the truth of my own reality and my failure to set an honest example for other clergy abuse survivors who were in the room. I was inauthentic.

Why didn’t I have the courage to show up in the world exactly as I am – as someone whose adrenaline can surge mightily if confronted with triggering religious trappings? Why could I not be fierce with my own reality? Why did I not protest? Why did I not immediately stand to meet her eye rather than cower under her hand?

The answer, of course, is that I was having a PTSD reaction. Her hand-on-the-shoulder, standing-over-me style of prayer was too similar to what my SBC pastor-perp used to do when I was a kid. 

And then there were the weaponized prayers of so many others who used God-talk afterwards to try to silence me.

Intellectually, I understand a lot about my complex PTSD – I’ve been fortunate enough to have years of therapy – and yet, in that moment, cognitive understanding wasn’t enough to stop the cascading feeling of doom in my body.

“Once faith has been used to eviscerate, it doesn’t serve well as a healing balm.”

Right after the event, I talked with several other clergy survivors, and one of them likely told the woman how distressing her prayer had been for me. She sent a gracious apology for causing me stress, and I thanked her. Nevertheless, I’m still left reeling and trying to return to normal.
Once faith has been used to eviscerate, it doesn’t serve well as a healing balm.

I think this is something many religious people – even well-intentioned people – just don’t understand. For them, faith can be a powerful resource for healing in all manner of life’s travails, and they can scarcely imagine it otherwise. But for people like me for whom faith was weaponized for sexual assaults and church cover-ups, the rituals and indicia of faith can be a minefield.

This is one reason why many clergy abuse survivors sever all relationships with institutional faith. 

For the sake of health, sanity and self-preservation, we turn away from the minefield.

It’s why many clergy abuse survivors nodded in solidarity at the words of SBC survivor Anne Marie Miller: “It is going to be a cold day in hell when I step back into a Baptist church.”

And while many people understand that survivors are often triggered by being in the same place where sexual assaults occurred, what they often fail to comprehend is that a triggering “place” may be something as simple as the context of a prayer or a particular piece of scripture. It may be any sort of stimulus that brings about the feelings of trauma in a “place” in our heads, and that includes sights and sounds associated with church and faith.

When Bible verses, prayer, hymns, faith, God-talk and church rituals are perverted into weapons for sexual assault and then hammered into shields for church cover-ups, they become neurologically networked with trauma, and this renders them polluted and often toxic for the survivors.

This is the truth of the damage done by a faith group that enables abuse and turns a blind eye to clergy-predators in their midst.\

https://baptistnews.com/article/clergy-sex-abuse-the-damage-done-when-faith-is-weaponized/?fbclid=IwAR01H4EpoXfCrjrpCyEs7dcK3zF_Q2zHYWymccH60Ty-bMAfwncRRICyK0Q#.XUOuU8PPCeo.facebook

What do paternalism and clemency for sex abusers have in common? The answer seems obvious: a worldview that values male dominance does not wish to shine light on the fact that a certain percentage of men take advantage of their position to sexually abuse women over whom they have power.

Paternalism, sex abuse, and the eternally unchanging Torah 

The Orthodox world today safeguard's this truth: the Torah’s meaning is eternal, unchanging, and decided by men

Israel's chief rabbis convene an emergency meeting with religious Zionist rabbis

What do paternalism and clemency for sex abusers have in common? The answer seems obvious: a worldview that values male dominance does not wish to shine light on the fact that a certain percentage of men take advantage of their position to sexually abuse women over whom they have power.

In a religious society such as Orthodox Judaism, this goes double for calling out rabbis who abuse those under their care. Such abuse runs the gamut from lewd talk with women they are counseling to forcing themselves on their seminary students. It is not that Orthodox society condones such behavior — it does not — but that when confronted with it, there is a tendency to try and keep it quiet, or minimize it, in order to “protect” the Torah. 

It is worth unpacking this point: What is being protected here exactly? If halakha forbids such behavior (it does), and Orthodox Jewish society condemns it (it does), and every so often a rabbi or educator is caught having engaged in it (which happens), what is stopping us from simply supporting the victim and condemning the perpetrator? How does minimizing the offense or keeping it quiet help the Torah? It doesn’t. But it does help the male dominated power in the Orthodox world that functions as the gatekeeper for the Torah and halakha.

To be clear, I do not believe this is a conscious process. There is no secret WhatsApp group of cover-up rabbis discussing how they need to defend another perpetrator. The process is more subtle and is related to the “mystique” of Torah.

Among the more conservative elements of Orthodox Judaism, there exists a popular myth: the eternal Torah has always been more or less what it is now. The Torah is not a product of a given time period but an eternal set of rules and beliefs that remains constant even as the world changes.

This belief can be challenged on many fronts, but a particularly difficult one for those who wish to maintain it relates to women’s issues. As Jewish law has its roots in pre-modern society, a core assumption is that the purveyors of its truths, the enforcers of its rules, and the participants in its institutions, are men. This means that the Torah’s meaning is decided by men, and the status of someone’s Judaism or marriage is determined by men.

A modern person might push back and say that Judaism is thousands of years old, and certainly much of what it takes for granted is based upon outdated assumptions. When the rabbis discuss medicine, for example, it is clear they do not know what the heart or liver does, that blood circulates, or that germs are what cause illness. They do not know that the earth revolves around the sun, or that the solar system is just a small part of a galaxy in an infinitely more immense universe.

Along the same lines, a critical thinking person could argue, the rabbis believed that women were inferior to men in their mental and emotional make up, just as the ancient societies in which they lived did. In such a context, the paternalism of the halakhic system makes a certain amount of intuitive sense.

Nowadays, however, just as we have revamped our understanding of medicine and science and adjusted our behaviors and laws accordingly, so too we must do the same with regard to the place of women in halakhic Judaism. Now that we know the old premise to be false, women should be full participants in its power structures.

To this challenge, some Orthodox rabbinic leaders have responded, “No, halakha’s paternalism is not based on a pre-modern understanding of the nature of women, but on the mysterious will of the divine creator.” Sometimes, apologetic explanations are offered, “women are more spiritual,” “men need more rules and responsibilities than women,” etc. With or without these, however, the take-home message remains the same: halakhic Judaism is fine as it is, and needs to make no adjustments to accommodate modern life.

Of course, any scholar of Modern Judaism can see that Orthodox Judaism has shifted in response to the modern notions of women’s equality. This began in the early 20th century, with the Beis Yaakov school system, when women started receiving formal Jewish education. It continued with religious women in Israel accepting the right to vote (this was controversial in its time), and today, in some streams of Orthodox Judaism, women are to’anot (a kind of lawyer) in religious courts, teachers in religious schools, and even spiritual leaders in synagogues. But there is also push-back.

As noted above, the idea of a pristine religious tradition that stays the same no matter the circumstances is a myth. Like all social movements, religion is a moving target. While certain elements of Orthodox Judaism have been slowly accommodating the modern notions of women’s equality, others, such as the hadarat nashim movement, have been moving in the opposite direction.

In these circles, not only is it a problem for women to be in positions of authority (especially over men), it is now forbidden for them to ride on the same part of the bus or even have their pictures in a magazine. Putting aside whatever halakhic rationalizations are put forward to defend this conservative position, the bottom line is that it is a reaction to the inroads women have been making in the Orthodox world.

Though this is not her argument, this, I believe, is at the core of the insight in Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll’s blog post, “Something’s Rotten in the State of Orthodoxy,” in which she shows the correlation between the kid gloves used on sex abusers (mostly men) and the increasing strictures on women.

Some rabbinic detractors have responded to Keats Jaskoll by saying that she is simply “complaining.” This reaction was almost a necessity. Those who wish to “defend the Torah,” meaning, the male dominated social structure halakha has had built in for millennia, need to push the view that it is a cardinal and eternal principle of the Torah that women cannot have power or publicity. For whatever reason, the divine creator has mandated that power is best left to men.

This brings us back to the cover up of sex abuse. The more we admit that rabbis — the male leaders the Torah ostensibly mandates based on hidden divine wisdom — are just people, and that some of them have used their status to obtain forbidden sexual pleasures at the expense of their flock, then it may have the “unfortunate” consequence of making the flock question the divine wisdom of male-only power structures.

As such, the natural, if subconscious, calculation is made: better to sacrifice the sexual safety of a small percentage of women than to open the floodgates to women’s equal participation in halakhic society. When the former occurs, it is a “minor” tragedy but if the latter were to occur, what would happen to our eternally unchanging Torah?

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/paternalism-sex-abuse-and-the-eternally-unchanging-torah/?utm_source=The+Blogs+Weekly+Highlights&utm_campaign=blogs-weekly-highlights-2019-08-01&utm_medium=email

For a Minimum of $95 and Up --- This Charlatan Chazer Will Steal Your Hard Earned Money ---- This Other Blog Keeps Taking Money From This Thief For Promoting This Fraud! Just Sayin'....

Removing Ayin Horah Remotely from Yerusholayim (and remotely removes you from your money at the same time - mamash a nes)

 People from the frum community worldwide have recently been enthralled with the amazing abilities of Rav Doniel Hool shlitah, who diagnoses ayin horah and then destroys it remotely from Yerusholayim, using the traditional method of pouring molten lead or ‘Blei Gissen’. Almost every day for the last few months, the list of stories on ‘the lead reveals’ page of his website gets longer!

  Provided with only the hebrew name of the client (and his/her’s mothers hebrew name) Rav Hool does the procedure in Yerusholayim and then tells the client -wherever they are on the planet- with uncanny accuracy what physical ailments he/she is suffering from. He has told people from all over the world whether they have problems with their teeth, a stiff neck, back pain, intestinal issues and so on.

 Rav Hool says “Telling people whom I have never met- what they are suffering from is not simply a ‘party trick’……There may be six hundred Reuven Ben Rochel’s alive, but when I tell Reuven ben Rochel in Los Angeles that he has a problem with his right leg and his left shoulder- he now has full confidence that I am treating the right person!”

 When asked how he can ‘read the lead’ like this, he simply says: “Every breath I breathe is with Siyyatah DiShmayah, and similarly it is only with Siyattah Dishmayah that I can do anything at all!”
 Rav Hool says almost everyone he has done the procedure for- showed clear signs of ayin horah in the lead. “Even if they have no physical ailments, the ayin horah shows up in the lead and it may be affecting any non physical area of their lives…”

 Not only has Rav Hool successfully diagnosed the ailments people have, he also has an impressive record of bringing a positive change in their lives by destroying their ayin horah! For example a woman had the procedure done because she needed a shidduch, but when Rav Hool did the procedure, he told her “You have lower back pain that is giving you difficulty to walk!” Three days after the procedure she reported her back problem had disappeared!

 A couple of weeks ago, a client who had the procedure done for his wife three weeks prior told Rav Hool ” “Yeah! No toothaches whatsoever since the procedure (she had toothaches the whole time beforehand!) and even though she has had some light headaches- they are much, much much better, not comparable to the absolutely agonizing headaches she had before the procedure!

Thanks!”

 Last week, a woman who had suffered continuous pain in her arm for two years straight, reported her pain has completely disappeared only four days after the procedure!

 Rav Hool has successfully ‘treated’ migraines, insomnia, parnossah issues shidduchim and so on!
 One can never know for sure whether it was the procedure done by Rav Hool that has caused a positive change, but the yeshuos people have seen soon after the procedure are too many to ignore! Many of the impressive successes are listed on the “success stories” of his website.

 Rav Hool only does the procedure for someone who agrees to undertake the strengthening of a mitzvah. Rav Hool says: “They don’t need to tell me what mitzvah they have chosen- it is between them and Hashem Yisborach, but I feel we can only have Siyattah DiShmayah if they provide this ‘spiritual currency’. I insist the undertaking is very small so that their kabolloh is 100% genuine.”

 Rav Hool has the full written endorsement (!) of Harav haGaon Rav Mattisyahu Doitch shlitah- dayan of the Eidah Chareidis and Moreh D’asrah of Ramat Shlomo Yerusholayim. He also has the encouragement from Harav Hagaon Rav Dovid Abuchatzerah Shlita.

 A talmid of Yeshivas Mercaz HaTorah, Gateshead, Ponevez and Mir, Rav Hool has been learning Torah full time for 30 years. It is intriguing that a talmid of the ‘litveshe’ yeshivos would get into such a thing but Rav Hool replies “I saw that the procedure actually works, and I know Hagaon Rav Yisroel Yaakov Fisher ztz’l sent hundreds of people to get rid of ayin horah in this way. What’s more- the Tzemach Tzeddek even allows heating up the lead on shabbos to try and save someones life- under certain circumstances! So if with S’D’ I can help people, and they will strengthen the performance of a mitzvah- why not?!”

To have the procedure done remotely-wherever you are in the world!- go to www.shevatiheyenoh.com



Moreynu Rosh Hayeshivah Hagaon Rav Gershon Edelstein Shlitah, Rosh Yeshivas Ponevez discussing divrey Torah with Rav Hool in Rav Hool’s home in 1997

 Moreynu Rosh Yeshivas Gateshead, Hagaon Rav Avrohom Gurvitz Shlitah with Rav Hool in 2005

בס''ד

INTERESTING FACT: Facial/skin blemishes are caused by Ayin horah! (Ba'al Shem Tov)

Pricing:

Procedure: $95

Kamiah discounted to $95 (plus $10 postage) if purchased with procedure.

Kamiah alone: $125 (plus $10 postage)

Payment may be made via Paypal (using email: dons77@gmail.com -Please select 'Pay for products or services' not 'family and friends') and we will confirm receipt of payment with you by email before the procedure. 

To Contact us:

Please provide your name

1. Please enter your email address here.

2.  Once you have contacted us we will contact you by email (usually within 24 hrs) and let you know when the procedure can be done, or how to receive the kamiah.
Please provide a phone number as Rav Doniel would like to speak with you before doing the procedure.

Any emails you receive from Rav Hool will be from email: dons77@gmail.com

Please also tell us where you heard about us!

YOU CAN USE THE MESSAGE BAR TO ASK US ANY QUESTIONS YOU MAY HAVE!

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What Happens When A Brilliant, Brash Ex-Orthodox Yeshiva Student Goes Mad? He suggests that the age of consent should be lowered to 15, or perhaps even 14.

Dershowitz defends ’97 column claiming statutory rape an ‘outdated concept’

 

22-year-old article resurfaces as Harvard law professor scrutinized over Jeffrey Epstein ties

Alan Dershowitz

 

 

JTA — In 1997, Alan Dershowitz wrote an opinion column headlined “Statutory rape is an outdated concept.”

Now, 22 years later, he’s defending the column on Twitter, at an awkward time: Dershowitz was a member of the team that got convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein a plea deal that sent him to prison for 18 months, a sentence that critics today say was unusually brief and lenient. Epstein is now being prosecuted for sex trafficking, and is accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls.

Dershowitz, a prominent defense lawyer and emeritus Harvard University law professor, himself faces accusations of sexual abuse from two of Epstein’s alleged victims — Virginia Roberts Giuffre and Sarah Ransome. He vehemently denies the accusations against him.

The 1997 column is getting renewed attention after it was quoted in a current New Yorker article about Dershowitz and his entanglement with Epstein. In the column, which ran in the Los Angeles Times, Dershowitz argues that statutory rape is an increasingly irrelevant legal concept as teenage sex is normalized and rarely prosecuted.

“This raises a fundamental question about the continuing legitimacy of statutory rape laws at a time when sex involving teenagers is so rampant and prosecution for statutory rape so selective,” Dershowitz wrote. “It is obvious that there must be criminal sanctions against sex with very young children, but it is doubtful whether such sanctions should apply to teenagers above the age of puberty, since voluntary sex is so common in their age group.”

He then suggests that the age of consent should be lowered to 15, or perhaps even 14.

Alan Dershowitz, right, represented sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in a controversial 2008 plea deal

 

 

Facing a barrage of criticism — for his handling of the Epstein plea deal, for the allegations against him and now for this column — Dershowitz has been unapologetic. He told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency earlier this month that “I have no misgivings and I will continue to represent controversial people. That’s what I do. If I’m in a case, my job is to get the best possible result.”

He similarly defended the 1997 column in a series of tweets. He said there should be “Romeo and Juliet exceptions” to statutory rape.

“I stand by the constitutional (not moral) argument I offered in my controversial oped,” he wrote. “[I]f a 16 year old has the constitutional right to have an abortion without state or parental interference, how could she not have the constitutional right to engage in consensual sex? … I did not suggest that it is moral to have sex with a 16 year old, but rather that the issue presents a constitutional conundrum worthy of discussion.”

He has also attacked the New Yorker profile of him, written by staff writer Connie Bruck. Before it was published, he called it a “hit piece” with the “explicit purpose of silencing my defense of President Trump, Prime Minister Netanyahu, and the State of Israel.”

The lengthy article, titled “The Devil’s Advocate,” quotes Giuffre, who in accusations going back to 2014 names Dershowitz among the men she says Epstein forced her to have sex with. Giuffre says she had sex with him at least six times. When asked why she had decided to name Dershowitz, she told Bruck, “Jeffrey got away with it, basically. And Dershowitz was one of the people who enabled that to happen.”

Dershowitz vociferously denied her allegations and ended up suing her lawyers in 2015. According to the article, the case was settled in 2016, with Dershowitz’s insurance company paying Giuffre’s lawyers an undisclosed sum. The settlement also included a sum of money to Dershowitz “which would allow him to claim a payment.”

Dershowitz writes that Giuffre “has a long history of lying for money,” and appears not to have told her friends or the FBI that he was among the people with whom she had sex. He says he gave Bruck access to tapes in which Giuffre’s high-powered lawyer, David Boies, acknowledges that it would have been impossible for Dershowitz to have been in the places where Giuffre claims to have met him. Boies disputes Dershowitz’s account.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/dershowitz-defends-97-column-claiming-statutory-rape-an-outdated-concept/?utm_source=The+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=daily-edition-2019-07-31&utm_medium=email