Making Sruli Belsky Proud: "AVB said he and his family had been bullied, harrased and vilified for trying to rid the ultra-orthodox Chabad commuity of the sexual abuse scourge."

Rabbis accused of sex abuse cover-up granted religious honours at Yeshivah Synagogue

A JEWISH victim of child sexual abuse was forced to sit and watch at the weekend as Rabbis accused of a widespread cover-up were granted religious honours.

The victim, known only as AVB, told the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse today that the honours were granted during a shul service at Yeshivah Synagogue.

He said both Rabbi Abraham Glick and Rabbi Yosef Feldman were given the honours in front of the congregation.

Rabbi Glick is yet to give evidence to the commission but has been blamed for failing to handle complaints of child abuse appropriately.

The former Yeshivah College principal still holds one of the most senior positions at the school despite reports he didn’t pass on numerous alleged incidents of sexual abuse to authorities while in charge between 1986 and 2007.

He was in charge of the school when convicted paedophile Rabbi David Kramer was hurriedly shipped to the US after complaints were made by parents alleging serious sexual misconduct in the early 1990s.

Rabbi Feldman sparked widespread criticism yesterday when he made a shocking defence of paedophiles, saying some should be left alone if they have not offended for several decades.

Rabbi Feldman said he didn’t agree that paedophiles who had repented and not reoffended risked jail time if they were prosecuted.

While the men were granted the honours at the weekend victims of abuse have complained that they have been shunned from receiving them since going public with their stories.

AVB said he and his family had been bullied, harrased and vilified for trying to rid the ultra-orthodox Chabad commuity of the sexual abuse scourge.

He said one Rabbi had even referred to him as a ‘moser’, the most offensive term for Jews, referring to one who breaks the rule of Mesirah, informing on Jews to secular authorities.

“We are being victimised. We’re being judged,” he said.

“The foundation is rotten to its core.

“I often wonder whether I made the right decision coming forward.

“I know I need to do what I need to do if we’re going to change things.”

Comparing the child sexual abuse crisis to the Holocaust AVB said Jews needed to learn from the wrongs of the past.

“We will never forget (the Holocaust). That is always etched in our history so it shall never happen again,” he said.

“The holocaust was the murder of Jews.

“We’ve heard evidence from multiple rabbis that the perpetration of abuse is a kin to murder.

“We need to accept and hold up that the murdering of children through sexual abuse by our own is also a crime.

“Those individuals need to be, I’m not sure if the word is banished, but they need to be held in that regard as having perpetrated that murder.”

AVB, who was molested by Yeshivah employees Daniel Hayman and David Cyrprys in Melbourne and Sydney, said abuse perpetrated on him was wholly avoidable.

And he said the Yeshivah community continued to rally around his abusers.

Yesterday, Rabbi Feldman, a close friend of Daniel Hayman, admitted being angry when he was charged fearing he would end up in jail.

“Is it just a situation where we punish someone for what they did 40 years ago even though they’ve changed totally? They’re not a threat to society and everything else,” he said.

“Of course according to law you’re supposed to, I never said it shouldn’t be done according to law.

“But I’m certainly not happy about it. I’ve said this again and again. I done know why this is an issue.”

The hearing continues.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/rabbis-accused-of-sex-abuse-cover-up-granted-religious-honours-at-yeshivah-synagogue/story-fni0fee2-1227214661016

"Not to mention those ultra-Orthodox Jews who blindly follow their rabbis’ ridiculous dictates"....

Shmuel Kaminetzky - Anti-Vaxxer

It’s only a pinprick, a momentary burst of pain for a tiny human being who doesn’t know what is happening and therefore cries with such abandon that even a veteran parent cringes at the sight. Vaccinating an infant can be frightening, and not just for the baby. It is essentially an act of faith, based on an intuitive belief that short-term pain will bring long-term protection. Until the latest measles outbreak became a public health crisis and a political punching bag, it was a routine that most of us in America followed without question, without thinking how lucky we are that the diseases plaguing prior generations had become a distant memory.

Now, a backlash fueled by fear, ignorance, narcissism and privilege has re-introduced a potentially fatal disease, measles, that public health officials thought had been eliminated 15 years ago.

 An odd alliance of libertarians who reflexively rebel at any sort of government mandate and impressionable liberals who practice what Jon Stewart calls “mindful stupidity” — not to mention those ultra-Orthodox Jews who blindly follow their rabbis’ ridiculous dictates — are demonstrating how badly frayed the American civic consensus has become.

But here’s what gives us hope: the backlash to the backlash. It’s been spontaneous, fierce, filling Facebook feeds with indignation and even nudging a few spineless politicians back from their pandering perches. When New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is forced to be quiet after his recent mumbling about “freedom to choose” and Sen. Rand Paul takes to showing off his latest vaccination on Twitter, there’s evidence that the backlash is exacting a political price.

In an America that seems to have lost its sense of communal responsibility, the vaccination debate may have pushed us to the breaking point. Other major public health issues pitting the rights of the individual against the needs of the community can feel distant until they swing into our consciousnesses and wallop us in the gut or the pocketbook, only to recede quickly, replaced by our more selfish impulses.

So after the massacre of children at the elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, any reasonable national action to limit the rights of gun owners rose and fell on the crest of public emotions, fading once the victims were buried and the horror forgotten. After Hurricane Sandy, the public debate about preventing widespread destruction from swelling seas and warming temperatures brought about by global climate change was eclipsed by the science deniers and the worries about economic consequences.

When it comes to public health, we have dangerously short attention spans and limited perspectives. Except, perhaps, with regards to our childrens’ well-being. The very reasons that extremists reject vaccinations is the very reason the majority of Americans so adamantly rejects the rejecters.

Because it’s not only about my child. Or your child. It’s about all of our children. It’s about the risks we assume together, based on the incontrovertible science that had banished measles, crushed polio, all but eliminated diphtheria and made us the envy of the developing world.

The backlash to the backlash is saying: I’ve done my bit to protect my child. You need to do the same, even if you are worried or uncomfortable, even if you still hold fast to the thoroughly debunked link of vaccines and autism, even if you are right to be concerned about an over-medicalized culture. Otherwise, the system doesn’t work, the immunity is punctured, the unity dissolves.

Rabbi Edward Reichman, a medical ethicist at Yeshiva University, points out that rabbinic decisors even permit Jews to violate the Sabbath if that is the only time an urgent vaccination can be had, so essential is it to protect public health. That fundamental Jewish impulse is behind the anti-anti-vaccinators’ impassioned cry. May it win the day.

Read more: http://forward.com/articles/214153/the-vaccination-nation/#ixzz3RHqzjnAc

U.S. Measles Cases for 2015 Rise 18.6% Over Past Week

CDC Reports 121 Measles Cases Currently

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that from Jan. 1, 2015 to Feb. 6, 2015, 121 people from 17 states and Washington, D.C. were reported to have measles [AZ (7), CA (88), CO (1), DC (1), DE (1), IL (3), MI (1), MN (1), NE (2), NJ (1), NY (2), NV (2), OR (1), PA (1), SD (2) TX (1), UT (2), WA (4)]. Most of these cases (103 cases or 85 percent) are part of a large, ongoing multi-state outbreak linked to an amusement park in California.
The United States experienced a record number of measles cases during 2014, with 644 cases from 27 states reported to CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD). This is the greatest number of cases since measles elimination was documented in the U.S. in 2000.

Source: CDC

"I have covered child abuse in the Jewish community for several years but even I didn’t understand the extent of the cover-ups, the lies, the ignorance and ridiculous actions of Rabbis in our community."

Royal Commission: Our darkest week

The Australian Jewish community has just witnessed one of its darkest weeks.

I have covered child abuse in the Jewish community for several years but even I didn’t understand the extent of the cover-ups, the lies, the ignorance and ridiculous actions of Rabbis in our community.

It’s time for us, as a community, to wake up and smell the roses.

• There are dozens of victims of child abuse in our community.
• Victims considered suicide, became addicted to drugs and some will never recover.
• Many victims have never, and probably will never, come forward.
• Victims came forward to Rabbis in Sydney and Melbourne in the 1980s.
• Sometime, Rabbis did nothing.
• Sometime, Rabbis tried to “fix” child sexual abusers.
• And every time, Rabbis didn’t tell the police.

And in Sydney, which has been the focus of most of this week it was worse:

• One rabbi thought a victim was joking when he came forward.
• Another rabbi placed a young girl from interstate in the home of convicted child sexual abuser Daniel ‘Gug’ Hayman and then told her she was lying when she claimed she was sexually assaulted.
• At one time an entire group of victims came forward to a rabbi, and was ignored.
• Yeshiva spiritual leader Rabbi Pinchus Feldman did not tell police he knew an alleged child sexual abuser was planing to leave the country because Rabbi Feldman “did not know there was any such obligation”.
• Rabbi Pinchus Feldman now accepts that his right-hand-man, Rabbi Baruch Lesches, knew of abuse allegations, but didn’t tell him.
• The head of Yeshiva’s Rabbinic School, Rabbi Yossi Feldman, did not know it was a crime for a teacher to touch the genitals of a child in 2002.
• Rabbi Yossi Feldman, at the age of 33, didn’t understand mandatory reporting laws when he was the director of a company that had a school.
• As recently as 2011 Rabbi Yossi Feldman said you “must” go to rabbis to report abuse instead of the police.
• As recently as 2011 Rabbi Yossi Feldman urged the rabbis not to call on victims to go the police because it would hurt his “friend”, and now convicted child sexual abuser, David Cyprys.

And these are just some of the unbelievable revelations that came out this week.

This was a horrific week for the Australian Jewish community, and it will only get worse next week when the focus moves from Sydney to Melbourne, where both Cyprys and David Kramer have been convicted of child sexual abuse allegation.

It shone a light on a part of the community that many of us either didn’t know about or refused to acknowledge.

There were serious problems within Chabad in the 1980s and dozens of victims of child abuse suffered as a result. But worse than that, is the problems that still exist today.

Victims are still shunned, they are still outcasts, they have lost friends and they have been let down by the religious leadership of the community.

So how do we fix this problem? How do we move forward?

For that, we turn to Rabbi Moshe Gutnick, who said this week:

“Each and every individual, mother and father, look into the eyes of their children and ask themselves the question: Do they want their children to have been abused? When the answer must be no; and when the answer must be that they would not want it to have been covered up; and when the answer must be that if it happened to them they would want the police to be called and justice to be served, they’ll look into their hearts and then they will know what to do.”

 Joshua Levi

http://www.jewishnews.net.au/royal-commission-our-darkest-week/40459

"I did not know what a crime was. In Japan, I heard they allow child pornography.”

Day 5: ‘I didn’t know it was illegal for an adult to lay down and massage a child”

FEBRUARY 6, 2015 · BREAKING NEWS, NEWS, THE-LATEST

RABBI Yossi Feldman, former president of the Rabbinic Council of NSW, told the Royal Commission today that when he was 33 years old in 2002 he didn’t know it was illegal for a man to touch a child’s genitals.

In another day of testimony that was baffling, almost unbelievable and surprising, Rabbi Feldman said that he hasn’t had formal training in spotting or dealing with child sexual abuse because he hasn’t had the time and a lot of it is common sense.

When explaining why he didn’t stop alleged child abuser AVL, who’s name has been withheld from the public, Rabbi Feldman said he didn’t think about the secular law and only the Jewish law.

The Counsel assisting the Royal Commission then asked the following question.

• You know there had been touching? Yes
• Had been massaging a child? Yes
• You know he is your relation? Yes
• You know a complaint has been mad? Yes
• You know it is about to be reported to the authorities? Yes
• You knew one of the things that might occur is a complaint would be made to the police? I didn’t know the seriousness of the legalities of these issues and I didn’t know if that was a criminal matter. I didn’t know much about sexual abuse at the time.
• You know when you had a conversation with AVL that he admitted to you the physical contact and laying down with a child could be a crime? I don’t know what the criminal code is and what is a crime. A lot of things could be a crime.

And she continued.

• After the conversation with your father you have a one-on-one conversation in which you learned that he lay down with a child and massaged the child? Correct
• You know now there has been physical contact? Correct.
• You know from that conversation that a complaint is being made about the abuse? Correct.

He went on to say: “I strongly feel form a Jewish perspective it (laying down and massaging a child) was wrong, but I wasn’t looking from a legal criminal perspective,” Rabbi Feldman said.

And then when Counsel asked if Rabbi Feldman knew it was illegal for an adult or teacher to law down and massage a child he said: “It could potentially  be something that was highly inappropriate. I did not know what a crime was. In Japan, I heard they allow child pornography.”

Later during Rabbi Feldman’s testimony he said that he tried to stop a press release by the rabbis asking for victims to come forward and go to police because it would negatively impact his friend, and now convicted child sexual abuser, David Cyprys.

http://www.jewishnews.net.au/day-5-i-didnt-know-it-was-illegal-for-an-adult-to-lay-down-and-massage-a-child/40456

What about students who are not learning disabled, but are just not interested in academics? What about students who may not have the aptitude or desire for schoolwork but have other skills and interests? Are their parents’ goals and aspirations congruent with their desires and abilities? Must every child go to college? Can Jewish parents handle a successful child who doesn’t have a college degree?

The Non-Academic Child: Is It Time to Create Kosher Vo-Tech Schools?

We’ve all heard the old jokes about proud Jewish mothers bragging about “my son the doctor, my son the lawyer,” etc. We also know the widespread belief that Jews are smart and, truth be told, we do have a disproportionate percentage of Nobel Prize winners relative to our numbers. We ought to be proud of our children who go on to distinguished careers in so many professions. The nachas is always multiplied when that successful child is also proud and unashamed of his/her heritage.

Educators can always spot children with great potential early on. Not just the rare gifted and talented students, but those with great aptitude, motivation, and love of learning—be it for math, science, Talmud, art, or creative writing. Schools have made great progress in the area of differentiated learning to provide for the individual needs of all students.

Many parents want their children to go to college and follow a career path that includes graduate school. This is as it should be for the average and above average student. Students with developmental issues will follow a different path. There is still much to be done in this area, but progress is being made.

What about students who are not learning disabled, but are just not interested in academics? What about students who may not have the aptitude or desire for schoolwork but have other skills and interests? Are their parents’ goals and aspirations congruent with their desires and abilities? Must every child go to college? Can Jewish parents handle a successful child who doesn’t have a college degree?

In many countries only those who are academically qualified by virtue of a standardized examination are allowed to enter university. Those who do not qualify follow another career path. In the pre-modern era it was called an apprenticeship. Young men and women learned a trade and developed skills that led to a livelihood. Today we call it a trade school or vocational training.

Not every child is college material. Literature, math, and science—not to mention rigorous Talmud study—may not be relevant to many children, as important as they may be in general. Why doesn’t the Jewish community operate schools to train young men and women in various trades and occupations that are needed and used by everyone? They can attend secular vocational training schools, but a Jewish school would be sensitive to issues of kashrut, Shabbat and holidays, co-ed classes, mincha breaks, etc. If there were a Jewish vocational high school, courses would include practical limudei kodesh. In addition, a Jewish school in a Jewish community provides many opportunities for networking and employment.

Many of these occupations can yield a very good income: computer repair, website design, diamond sorting and cutting, electricians, plumbers, graphic designers, contractors, HVAC engineers, auto repair, beauty, grooming and fashion trades, real estate brokers, insurance agents, appliance repairmen, civil servants, building trades, food service, agricultural careers, and the list goes on. It is not at all unusual to find Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews in these professions.

We tend to think of vocational education as being outside educational enterprise and often in pejorative terms. The result is that vocational schools are underutilized. If Jewish stand-alone vocational schools are too far off on the horizon, vocational training can become an acceptable track in our high schools. We can restructure the relationship between academic and vocational education. Integration need not focus heavily on “high tech” vocational programs to the exclusion of more traditional vocational education. Mainstream educational and cognitive research has just started to address the potential value of efforts to integrate or align academic and vocational curricula.

Educational researchers, theorists, and policymakers have thus far failed to consider vocational education seriously—in combination with applied academics—as part of the solution for improving educational outcomes for non-college-bound youth. Perhaps because of the stigma attached to vocational education—or more likely because vocational education does not typically show up on the mainstream education or psychology researcher’s radar screen—the logical connections between theories or observations and the types of learning opportunities offered by vocational education are overlooked.

Many years ago, Dr. Howard Gardner of Harvard University challenged the idea that human intellect is a unidimensional, overarching faculty. Instead, he articulated a theory of “multiple intelligences,” suggesting that, at a minimum, there are seven different ways in which an individual can be intellectually talented. Gardner does not dispute the need for a core curriculum that transmits the critical elements of our common culture to all students. He argues that our tunnel vision in how we deliver the common culture in the classroom is costing us a great loss of human talent. So long as a uniform curriculum is embraced, most individuals are destined to emerge as untalented. Not only is there little room at the top, but standardized regimens tend to favor individuals who exhibit certain intellectual profiles, ones which may be valuable for the aforementioned curricula but need not signal success outside the school setting.

This is not a novel idea, but we as a community—and especially the ultra-Orthodox community— have failed this segment of the population. Surely somewhere out there is an investor or group of investors who see the business potential of operating such a school or network of schools. It could help the Jewish community in myriad ways.

Suffice it to say that our future poets and artists, musicians and authors, salesmen and shopkeepers, builders and fixers are the square pegs that don’t always fit into our round holes. Isn’t it time that we as a community offer them the means to further their dreams?

Rabbi Dr. Wallace Greene has had a distinguished career as a Jewish educator. He is currently a consultant to schools and non-profit organizations, and serves as Executive Secretary of The Alisa Flatow Memorial Scholarship Fund. He can be reached at wmg14c@gmail.com.

http://jewishlinknj.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6688%3Athe-non-academic-child-is-it-time-to-create-kosher-vo-tech-schools&catid=162%3Aschools&Itemid=574

Just How Dumb & Dangerous Is Sam?

In 1998, an esteemed medical journal published a paper with a startling conclusion: that the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine — administered to millions of children across the globe each year — could cause autism.

This study, led by the discredited physician-researcher Andrew Wakefield, is where the current vaccine-autism debate started. It has since been thoroughly eviscerated: The Lancet retracted the paper, investigators have described the research as an "elaborate fraud," and Wakefield has lost his medical license.

But public-health experts say that Wakefield's false data and erroneous conclusions, while resoundingly rejected in the academic world, still drive some parents' current worries about the MMR shot.

Here are five reasons — and many links to further reading — that should remind you just how terrible his research was.

1) Forget the fraud and data manipulation: the MMR vaccine-autism study was bad science

To begin with, Wakefield's association between the MMR vaccine and autism was based on a case report involving only 12 children. "Case reports" are detailed stories about particular patients' medical histories. And — because they basically just stories — they are considered among weakest kinds of medical studies.

In this case, many children have autism and nearly all take the MMR vaccine. Finding, among a group of a dozen children, that most of them happen to have both is not at all surprising and in no way proves that the MMR vaccine causes autism. (Wakefield also proposed a link between the vaccine and a new inflammatory bowel syndrome, which has since been called "autistic enterocolitis" and also discredited.)

But don't stop with the retracted study. The totality of the evidence opposes this vaccine-autism theory. Large-scale studies involving thousands of participants in several countries have failed to establish a link between the MMR vaccine and the mental developmental disorder. As one of the most thorough studies to date showed, nearly half a million kids who got the vaccine were compared to some 100,000 who didn't, and there were no differences in the autism rates between the two groups. "This study provides strong evidence against the hypothesis that MMR vaccination causes autism," the authors wrote in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Studies published in The Lancet, The Journal of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, PLoS One, and — among others — The Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders have also found no association between the vaccine and autism.

2) Study author Andrew Wakefield manipulated and misrepresented his data

(The Lancet)

A British investigative journalist, Brian Deer, followed up with the families of each of the 12 kids in the study. He concluded, "No case was free of misreporting or alteration." In other words, Andrew Wakefield, lead author of the original report, manipulated his data. (See the popup chart in this report for details.)

In The British Medical Journal, Deer spells out exactly what he found, and it's rather shocking that this study was ever published in the first place. You learn that the parents of many of the kids deny the conclusions in the study; some of the kids who Wakefield suggested were diagnosed with autism actually weren't; others who Wakefield suggested were "previously normal"  actually had pre-existing developmental issues before getting their shots.

3) The paper is based on blood samples Wakefield drew at his kid's birthday party

Even more absurdly, when the General Medical Council (the UK's medical regulator) began to investigate Wakefield, they found that he had paid children at his son's 10th birthday party to donate their blood for his research. That isn't exactly a controlled and ethical setting.

In fact, in deciding to take his UK medical license away, the GMC said Wakefield acted with "callous disregard for the distress and pain the children might suffer."

4) Wakefield filed a patent for an MMR vaccine alternative

Wakefield also had financial conflicts of interest. Among them, while he was discrediting the combination measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, and suggesting parents should give their children single shots over a longer period of time, he was conveniently filing patents for single-disease vaccines.

"For the vast majority of children, the MMR vaccine is fine," he said, "but I believe there are sufficient anxieties for a case to be made to administer the three vaccinations separately." He also suggested the long-term safety studies of the MMR shouldn't be trusted.

Brian Deer's investigation revealed that, in June 1997, he had filed a patent for a supposedly "safer" single measles vaccine. Deer writes, "Although Wakefield denied any such plans, his proposed shot, and a network of companies intended to raise venture capital for purported inventions — including 'a replacement for attenuated viral vaccines', commercial testing kits and what he claimed to be a possible 'complete cure' for autism — were set out in confidential documents."

5) Wakefield has refused to replicate the paper's findings

At the very bedrock of science is the concept of falsification: a scientist runs a test, gathers his findings, and tries to disprove himself by replicating his experiment in other contexts. When that's done, only then can he know that his findings were true.

Callous Disregard, Wakefield's book. (Image via Amazon.)

Wakefield has never done this. As the editor of The BMJ points out, "Wakefield has been given ample opportunity either to replicate the paper's findings, or to say he was mistaken. He has declined to do either." In 2004, 10 of his coauthors on the original paper retracted it, but Wakefield didn't join them, and he has since continued to push his views, including doing the rounds on the anti-vaxxer speakers' circuit and publishing books.

On his own website, he portrays himself as an embattled hero: "In the pursuit of possible links between childhood vaccines, intestinal inflammation, and neurologic injury in children, Dr. Wakefield lost his job in the Department of Medicine at London’s Royal Free Hospital, his country, his career, and his medical license." He even tried to sue the BMJ and Deer, suggesting they were going after him in some sort of vendetta. So far, these lawsuits have gone nowhere.

WATCH: 'Vaccines do not cause autism, they save lives'

What is a vaccine?

Vaccines are drugs that bolster the body's immunity to particular diseases. They work by imitating — but not causing — an illness in a way that forces the body to develop a supply of defensive cells. These cells can then recognize and fight off a future infection, should it occur.
Vaccines have eliminated some of the most dangerous, fatal diseases in human history. The World Health Organization in 1979 declared smallpox globally eradicated, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that same year proclaimed polio eradicated in the United States. Other vaccines have managed to push various diseases to the brink of extinction, including tetanus and whooping cough.
The scientific community widely supports vaccines, seeing them as one of the most crucial medical breakthroughs of the past few centuries. At the same time, some groups generally oppose vaccination — both now and historically. Most recently, some vaccine opponents argued that vaccines may cause autism, although the link is not supported by current scientific research.

Everything you need to know about vaccines

http://www.vox.com/2015/2/2/7965885/the-research-linking-autism-to-vaccines-is-even-more-terrible-than 

New cause of action: Tortious Non-Vaccination.

This is when a person who could be vaccinated but chooses not to (or his parents choose not to) becomes infected and then infects someone else who could not be vaccinated such as a someone with leukemia or some other immune deficiency or sensitivity to vaccinations.
What victims of Tortious Non-Vaccination should do is file a complaint seeking to certify a defendant class action and bring a claim against all Tortious Non-Vaccinators [who had gotten the disease]....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/02/03/non-vaccination-failure-to-control-pollution/

Eugene Volokh teaches free speech law, religious freedom law, church-state relations law, a First Amendment Amicus Brief Clinic, and tort law, at UCLA School of Law, where he has also often taught copyright law, criminal law, and a seminar on firearms regulation policy.