This was what my world had come to. The truth is I knew that besides for a few select people, my world would be rocked by the news of my suicide...

Guest Post – Nobody Knew How Badly I wanted to Kill Myself and How Close I Came to Doing It

 Posted by Rabbi Efrem Goldberg (link to his blog is at the bottom)

 

Last week, we hosted an event on the growing drug issue in the Jewish community.  A few hours before the event, a young man I know, or thought I knew well, sent the letter below to me.  He asked that I share it with the hope his story can help others and I began the program by reading it.  When I first opened it, I was reminded of a quote I find very meaningful: “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.”  I have great admiration for his courage in reaching out and for his desire to make himself vulnerable in an effort to be there for others. If you are feeling the way he describes, you are not alone. Reach out and it can and will get better.  May Hashem bless him and all those struggling with similar issues with only strength, happiness and success.

————————————————————————————————

Standing on the roof of my yeshiva overlooking one of the holiest cities in Israel, I stared at the graves of my fore-bearers and dreamed of meeting them. I had just returned from yeshiva after a three week bender and I was so filled with self loathing and pity I couldn’t stop thinking of ending my life. It would be so simple I told myself, one jump, 10-15 seconds and it would all be over. The pain, the anger, the sadness. All gone. I even had the perfect plan, it was still Yom tov in America so I could text every member of my family explaining my choice and begging their forgiveness, but they would only see the messages long after I was gone.

This was what my world had come to. The truth is I knew that besides for a few select people, my world would be rocked by the news of my suicide.

I had meticulously maintained an image of confidence and happiness that most people bought into hook line and sinker. 

The image I cultivated was one of a smart confident young man who simply enjoyed having a good time. However; the truth was that behind that carefully crafted image was nothing. A singularity to match that of the largest black hole in existence. I was hopelessly empty.

 I had spent my life convinced that an endless supply of designer clothing and joints would be enough to keep me satisfied. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t. I had reached my end. The yeshiva was completely empty, I was all alone, with no way out, and no weed or alcohol to numb the pain of simply being alive.

Now this desire to end my life did not simply appear one day, it had been festering in my head for years; however, I never mentioned it to anyone in fear of shattering my precious image, my immaculate persona. I couldn’t let real emotions ruin people’s ideas of me, perish the very thought. So I allowed that voice to remain dormant in the back of my head, always there but never acknowledged. I thought of different ways I would do it, always hypotheticals I told myself. Just “what ifs” I even came up with the perfect suicide. I would put a hose in my exhaust pipe and attach the other end to the window of my car, turn the car on, wash down two Xanax with some scotch, smoke a joint, and simply never wake up. Painless. The perfect way to go out. But I of course never acted on it, or told anyone how I was really feeling.

Then it started getting worse, my first year in yeshiva, while davening not 100 feet from the kotel on rosh hashana, watching everyone around me crying out to HaShem to grant them life for the year, I davened for the opposite. I davened for an easy way out. I begged God to end my life that year. I asked to be hit by a bus, or to even be involved in a terror attack. I knew I couldn’t do it myself, not out of self preservation, I simply wasn’t that selfish. I couldn’t subject my family to any more torment at my hands, although I often thought I’d be sparing them endless pain by simply taking myself out of the equation. For months during that year I would go to sleep every night hoping and praying I simply wouldn’t wake up the next morning, and every morning I would open my eyes and feel the crushing disappointment of having to endure another day. Modeh Ani seemed to be mocking me.

Until one night in my Shana bet, after enduring as much as I could I decided it was time. As I sat there taking in what were surely my last few moments I began to cry. Once my tears started they wouldn’t stop, hot and thick they poured down my face as I realized that I would rather die than simply admit that I wanted to. I would rather destroy my actual self than the one I had been projecting all these years. Tears still flowing I called my father, knowing as an ER physician his cell phone would be on during Yom Tov. He answered the phone on the third ring immediately asking “what’s wrong”?

Choking back sobs I began to tell him everything. For the first time I broke down my image. I told him how much I hated being alive. How for the last few years my biggest wish was that an asteroid would collide with the earth, allowing me to die without hurting anyone else. When I finished speaking my father explained to me that I was sick. Much like someone who has strep throat, and much like strep if untreated my sickness would get worse and worse. 

He made me go in for a psychiatric evaluation where I was almost immediately diagnosed with clinical depression and put on antidepressants. I keep thinking how different my life might be had I broken down my image in 12th grade, or even last year, but I was too afraid. Too scared of what people would think of me knowing that I wanted to kill myself. As it turns out no one thought anything less of me. People understood.

I finally gathered the courage to tell one of my closest friends  and his response was that we have friends so that we can tell people about these things. His response was one of love not judgment. I didn’t feel weird or different when telling him, on the contrary I felt liberated and free. Someone would actually understand me, understand the feelings I had been suppressing for years. I really never felt better. I write this now as I start a new chapter of my life, one of honesty not of farces. Of truth not lies. Of sobriety not drug dependence. I write this free of the burden of pretending to be something I’m not. I write this not in the hopes of garnering pity or sympathy, I write this in the hopes that even one person who has felt the way I have felt, and is scared to talk about it will read this and understand how much better their life can become by simply confiding in those they trust.

http://rabbisblog.brsonline.org/guest-post-nobody-knew-badly-wanted-kill-close-came/

Police arrested David Teitelbaum late Sunday, but the victim’s parents have stopped cooperating with police, fearful of the shame the incident will cause the family, according to a source familiar with the case....

Brooklyn man busted for repeatedly raping pre-teen member of extended family

The pre-teen's therapist notified the NYPD and and the Child Abuse Squad launched an investigation.

BY Rocco Parascandola

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Monday, November 13, 2017, 1:40 PM

An 18-year-old Brooklyn man repeatedly raped a pre-teen member of his extended family, police sources said Monday.

Police arrested David Teitelbaum late Sunday, but the victim’s parents have stopped cooperating with police, fearful of the shame the incident will cause the family, according to a source familiar with the case.

“The guy rapes their daughter and they’re protecting him — unbelievable” said the source. “I can’t even imagine how angry I’d be if it was my daughter.”

The girl, whose age and relationship to the victim are being withheld to protect her identity, was attacked several times over the course of a week during October inside the suspect’s Williamsburg apartment, sources said.

At some point the girl told her mother the suspect had touched her inappropriately, sources said.

The mother and father sent the child to therapy, sources said. During a talk with her therapist she revealed that she had been raped.

The therapist notified the NYPD and and the Child Abuse Squad launched an investigation.

Teitelbaum, who has no previous arrest record, was charged with rape, sex abuse and acting in a manner injurious to a child younger than 17.

He was awaiting arraignment Monday.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/brooklyn-man-busted-raping-pre-teen-member-extended-family-article-1.3629875?cid=bitly

It’s time to start calling childhood sexual abuse what it is. To do less is to make invisible the trauma of our children—allowing child sexual predators to minimize their behavior and continue to offend and abuse. ...

Call It What It Is: Child Sexual Abuse

 

The recent allegations about a 1979 incident involving then 32-year old Alabama Assistant District Attorney Roy Moore illustrate, once again, that we are woefully misinformed and misguided about the reality of childhood sexual abuse and assault.

When an adult—whether a teacher, clergy member, coach, or in this case a prosecutor in a courthouse—initiates a sexual conversation or has sexual contact with a minor child, the incident is child sexual abuse, period.

The most commonly used terms to describe adult sexual contact with a person under the age of 18 include:

• Sexual encounter
• Relationship
• Sexual relations
• Sexual relationship
• Dating, or “He asked her on a date”
•  

A minor child does not have the ability to give consent for sexual contact with an adult. That is why consent laws exist, and why an adult who has sexual contact with a minor child is guilty of a criminal act.

An adult, no matter what his/her status, is in an authority role over a minor child. A child does not freely—without direct or indirect coercion—enter into a relationship, sexual relationship, sexual relations, or “date” an adult. In fact, adults have a duty to protect children from such coercion and exploitation.

Some Moore apologists have argued that because the age of consent in Alabama is 16, Moore’s other accusers who were older—but still teenagers—are in a separate category from the 14-year old victim, Ms. Corfman. At the time of the alleged abuse, the age of consent in Alabama was three years younger than the legal drinking age. Today, the legal drinking age in Alabama is 21, yet the age of consent remains 16.

Regardless of what you believe is the appropriate age of consent, there is no rational basis for requiring a person to be 21 years old to consume alcohol, yet maintaining that they have the maturity to consent to sexual contact five years sooner. 

Survivors of childhood sexual abuse—especially women who were abused as teenagers by a respected authority figure such as a teacher or a coach—feel a toxic stew of emotions including , shame, guilt, and affection as a result of their abuse. They wonder, “Did I bring this on myself? Was it really abuse if I felt flattered, special, or ‘in love’?”

One of Moore’s alleged victims, Ms. Corfman, describes how Moore’s actions impacted her:

“I felt responsible,” she says. “I felt like I had done something bad. And it kind of set the course for me doing other things that were bad.” 

 

(Washington Post, November 9, 2017)

When the abuse continues for months or even years, the victim often feels as though she/he is in love with the perpetrator. The impact of childhood sexual abuse creates deeply confusing and ambivalent feelings about the abuse and the perpetrator that may persist for years—or even decades.

If Ms. Corfman’s allegations about Moore’s conduct are true—and there is no reason to believe that they are not—she is likely one of many more victims beyond the three others identified in the
Washington Post report.

The description of Moore approaching Ms. Corfman and her mother in that Alabama courthouse in 1979 posing as their protector is classic—and practiced—predatory behavior. The proper term for his alleged behavior is “grooming,” and its purpose is to lay the groundwork for sexually abusing the predator’s target in the future.

It’s time to start calling childhood sexual abuse what it is. To do less is to make invisible the trauma of our children—allowing child sexual predators to minimize their behavior and continue to offend and abuse.

Vicki Tidwell Palmer, LCSW, CSAT is a relational trauma expert specializing in infidelity and betrayal trauma. She is the author of Moving Beyond Betrayal: The 5-Step Boundary Solution for Partners of Sex Addicts. For more information please visit her website: vickitidwellpalmer.com, or follow her on Twitter @vtidwellpalmer

Sounds Like A Yeshiva...

Yeshiva Torah Temima

They Quietly Left the Church, but the Sexual Abuse Continued

The Diocese of Brooklyn on Thursday released the names of eight former priests who had been quietly removed from the church for sexual abuse of children; several of those men went on to commit sex crimes after they left the diocese.

After leaving active ministry in 2002 as a priest in Brooklyn, Stephen Placa got his pilot’s license and founded a flight school in Ronkonkoma, Long Island, the Heritage Flight Academy. Seven years later, he was convicted in Suffolk County of the sexual abuse of two boys, ages 8 and 10.

In 1987, the Rev. Thomas O. Morrow went on an indefinite leave of absence from the Diocese of Brooklyn and began working as a psychologist in Forest Hills. He was still officially a priest when he was indicted in 1996 on charges that he sodomized a 15-year-old boy he was hired to counsel, took nude photographs of him and gave him crack to smoke. The diocese said at the time it had never gotten any complaints of abuse. Eventually, it defrocked him.

The two men are among the eight priests who the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn revealed on Thursday had been laicized, or defrocked, by the Vatican for the sexual abuse of children since 2002. Of those eight, four went on to be arrested and convicted on child sex abuse charges after they left active ministry in Brooklyn. The other four do not appear to have been arrested, though whether they reoffended is unknown.

The public disclosure of eight of the likely dozens of priests who have sexually abused children in the Brooklyn diocese over the decades was met with a mixture of praise and frustration from victims and their advocates on Friday. While they were gratified that the disclosures would probably protect additional children, they noted that this was nowhere near a full accounting of clergy sex abuse in the diocese.

“I’m encouraged by the release of eight names — I do think it’s good,” said Michael Reck, a lawyer who is representing two of the victims of Romano J. Ferraro, among the eight former priests named on Thursday. “But this is a trickle compared to the flood that they are holding back.”

Carolyn Erstad, a spokeswoman for the diocese, said Friday that it had chosen to release the names of living priests who had been formally defrocked by the Vatican because they could still be a danger to children. She said it was not releasing the names of dead priests who had been defrocked because they were no longer a threat.

She did not address why the diocese was withholding the names of abusers who had been named by victims in successful abuse settlements, but who had not been formally laicized. Not all abusive priests are laicized; that process at the Vatican is long and does not always result in the loss of a clerical state.

“This is about releasing the names of people who may have access to children,” she said, adding that the diocese anticipated more names would added to the list next week.

She noted that the diocese now routinely shares all allegations of abuse with law enforcement, and that it had done so since 2002, when reforms were passed nationally in the Roman Catholic Church to protect children. Before that, it was common to withhold allegations of abuse from law enforcement. She also noted that the diocese had previously publicly acknowledged substantiated allegations against priests.

Of the eight men named Thursday, the most notorious was Mr. Ferraro, who is believed to have been one of the most prolific priest pedophiles on the Eastern Seaboard, and one of whom the most is known.

His past in the church was divulged by the Diocese of Brooklyn, which, after a four-year battle, was required to disclose some 1,200 pages of information from his personnel file for a civil suit in Miami relating to his abuse of a boy in Key West in 1969. The papers show that church officials in Brooklyn knew as early as 1973 that he had abused boys, and that they helped him to get jobs in other dioceses around the country when they no longer wanted him in Brooklyn. He was said to have revealed his attraction to young boys in the seminary.

In 1981, Anthony Bevilacqua, then a high-ranking Brooklyn chancery official, who later became the cardinal archbishop of Philadelphia, facilitated Mr. Ferraro’s move to a Missouri parish, where he was later accused of molesting children. He also allegedly abused boys in the dioceses of Rockville Centre and Metuchen, N.J.

He was formally removed from ministry in 1988, and in 2004, was convicted of child sexual assault for raping a Massachusetts boy in the 1970s. He is now serving a life sentence in a medium-security prison in Bridgewater, Mass. Throughout his career, from 1960 to 1988, he was officially a priest of the Diocese of Brooklyn.

Although the diocese identified the eight former priests, it is impossible to know in most of the cases when the diocese knew about the abuse and what it did about it. The church’s brief statement only says what years they served as active priests, and not when the laicizations took place, or when the first allegations came in.

Of the priests, several had never been publicly named as sex abusers, including James Lara, who lost his job as a professor at Arizona State University on Thursday after his name was posted.

Charles M. Mangini went on to live in Old Bridge, N.J. after his removal from ministry in 1993. 

Reached at home on Thursday, the 79-year-old affirmed in a cheery voice that he had been a priest in Brooklyn. He quickly changed his tone when told why the diocese had just posted his name.

Christopher Lee Coleman, now 61, who was removed from ministry in 2011, still maintains a Facebook page, and a LinkedIn page that makes it seem as if he is a priest. “I live a vowed life. Ordained 21 May 1994, Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn,” it says.

The LinkedIn page says he got a doctorate in sociology from the CUNY Graduate Center, and since 2013 he has been a hermit and counselor, at the Hermitage of Peace. His address is given as the Queen of All Saints Church in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

Anthony Hughes, 42, a clergy sex abuse victim from the diocese who regularly participates in activities it holds for abuse survivors, said Friday that it was a “fabulous idea” that the names were being released, and that he hoped there would be more. When told that the diocese was not planning on releasing the names of deceased priests, he then volunteered the name of the deceased priest who abused him.

“Father Robert Titone,” he said, “at St. Anthony - St. Alphonsus in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.” Mr. Hughes, who recently received a settlement for the abuse, said he was 11 when the abuse started and from a poor family. He recalled the priest as generous. “He was the greatest thing since sliced bread,” Mr. Hughes said, “and then the sickness came out in him.”

A version of this article appears in print on November 11, 2017, on Page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: Defrocked Priests Quietly Left Brooklyn, but the Child Sex Abuse Continued. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/10/nyregion/they-quietly-left-the-church-but-the-sexual-abuse-continued.html?emc=edit_tnt_20171110&nlid=32999454&tntemail0=y&_r=0

 

The OU cannot — dare not — allow any of its executives to kosher and legitimize countries like Qatar. Only the emir himself can do that, by immediately ceasing all funding of terror against Jews...

Message to the Orthodox Union: Blood Is Never Kosher

Doha, Qatar.

America is having another bad week.

On Sunday, yet another mass shooting struck the United States, this time in a house of worship where 26 of the faithful were shot as they crawled out from behind their pews. Then we watched as the Middle East teetered ever closer to the brink, with political waves rocking Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Lebanon. Then came the release of the “Paradise Papers” by The New York Times, with yet more blatant financial corruption laid bare for all to see. This, all in addition to the endless scandals that plague our political and cultural spheres.

One would expect that in such times as these, rabbis and other religious leaders would stand tall as beacons of hope of moral clarity within which our hearts could find some much needed refuge.
Yet on Monday, The Jerusalem Post reported that a coalition of prominent rabbis led by Rabbi Menachem Genack of Englewood, New Jersey had traveled to Qatar to meet with its emir.

Following the recent successes of the Russian military forces in Syria, there are renewed indications that Moscow is seeking some...

Qatar isn’t any Arab state. It’s the world’s number one funder of Hamas, an organization dedicated not only to the annihilation of Israel, but to the murder of all Jews — “wheresoever they may be found,” to quote Hamas’ founding charter.

In 2012, the nation of Qatar pledged four hundred million dollars to the terror group. Apparently pleased to see Hamas had used this money to launch over 5,000 rockets against Israeli civilians, Qatar would ratchet up its commitment by promising another billion dollars to the blood-thirsty leadership of Gaza in 2014.

As if their anti-Semitism couldn’t be more clear, Qatar hosts not just the Hamas leadership, but the man who may be described as the world’s foremost Jew hater: Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Worse than denying the Holocaust, Qaradawi has praised Hitler for his slaughter of European Jews and prayed that Allah help him finish the job. “Oh Allah,” he cried in a sermon, “take this oppressive, Jewish, Zionist band of people…count their numbers, and kill them down to the very last one!” The nation of Qatar didn’t just tolerate that kind of genocidal hate-speech, it actually broadcast it on its own Al Jazeera network.

Moreover, Rabbi Genack, whom I consider a friend, isn’t just any American rabbi. He’s one of America’s most prominent Orthodox Jewish voices, known for his close friendship with former President Bill Clinton. And just to make these efforts to kosher Qatar (intentionally or not) even more ironic, Rabbi Genack is actually the head of the Orthodox Union’s global kosher authority.

The man responsible for the koshering of crackers, cheese and steaks has now been brought in to “kosher” the emir of Qatar who finances tunnels meant to kidnap Jewish children from southern kibbutzim; to “kosher” Qatar’s funding of rockets meant to dismember elderly men and women who can’t run fast enough toward the nearest shelter; to “kosher” Qatar’s financing of the murder of sixty-seven soldiers and six Israeli civilians during Operation Protective Edge.

But the Bible is clear: Blood can never be kosher (Leviticus 17:13-14).

A few weeks ago, I was myself invited to meet the emir by the man organizing the whitewashing effort. Our organization, The World Values Network, responded with two full-page ads in The New York Times declaring “If Qatar Wants a PR Makeover, Stop Funding Terror.” On the bottom of the ad, we added the headline: “Meeting with Qatar Condones Murder.”

Why? Because Qatar is only hiring Jewish PR agencies and arranging meetings with American Jews in order to prove its legitimacy. After all, it could now tell the American people and the rest of the world: “How bad could we be? Look how many rabbis and Jewish leaders have come to meet with us.” And thus, it gets to fund the murder of Jews without paying a price. Enabling a Qatari makeover allows it to get away with murder.

Qatar can repent. If the emir to be brought back into the community of nations, all he needs to do is announce the immediate cessation of all funding of Hamas. He should immediately expel Yusuf al-Qaradawi, and Hamas terror masterminds Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Mashaal. And he should stop the daily demonization of Israel that takes place on Al Jazeera, a veritable glut of anti-Semitic poison designed to make the world hate the Jewish state. But until such steps are taken, Qatar cannot be allowed to whitewash its crimes.

This is not the first time Rabbi Genack and I have clashed over Israel. When my close friend, Senator Cory Booker, whom I introduced to Rabbi Genack at my home, shocked and shattered American Jewish hearts by voting for the Iran nuclear deal despite the rogue state’s daily threats of a second Holocaust of the Jews, Rabbi Genack was one of the Jewish leaders who worked to protect Cory’s reputation among American Jews and help him hold on to his quickly vanishing Jewish support.
This led to serious pain in my relationship with Rabbi Genack. It was just beginning to heal when I suddenly saw this shocking story about Qatar.

I do not doubt that Rabbi Genack is a very good man, a great scholar and utterly dedicated to the welfare of the Jewish people. No doubt in his mind he believes that he can change the emir. But far more likely is that Qatar is using him to show it’s kosher, and Rabbi Genack should judge the Qatari government by its actions, not its hospitality. Respectfully, we owe it to all the Jews that have been murdered by Hamas to never allow its paymasters off the hook.

The Orthodox Union put out a puzzling statement that “Rabbi Genack is traveling [to Qatar] in his personal capacity as a private individual and this trip is not under the auspices of the OU.”

But you cannot have a top executive of the most important Orthodox Jewish organization in the United States playing global diplomat with terror financiers noted for their hatred of Jews. So long as he occupies one of the OU’s most senior positions, Genack’s actions will reflect on the organization itself.

The concept of kosher is more than just an examination of body parts and mixing milk and meat. It communicates a vital idea of taking something as mundane as meat and elevating it into the realm of holiness. It conveys the human capacity to live a sacred life in accordance with God’s will.

The OU cannot — dare not — allow any of its executives to kosher and legitimize countries like Qatar. Only the emir himself can do that, by immediately ceasing all funding of terror against Jews.

Until then, let us not forget, blood is never kosher.

https://www.algemeiner.com/2017/11/08/message-to-the-orthodox-union-blood-is-never-kosher/

For him, there was only one thing worse than illusion – self-delusion, an enterprise he feared the Jews had begun to master all too well....

The iconoclastic firebrand that was Rabbi Meir Kahane, Hy"d

For his yahrzeit, 18 Cheshvan.

Tragically, when the sun set before its scheduled time, we lost the most noble Jew of our generation.

Perhaps more than any other, his was a life dedicated to serving Am Yisrael. Regrettably, it was a life ended abruptly in the struggle to awaken a nation that had taken to slumber only a generation after the greatest tragedy that befell its people.

Brilliant and inspired, he was an iconoclastic firebrand who left his mark wherever he walked or whenever he talked. To be sure, friend and foe alike came to understand that there was no place he was ever afraid to go, and nothing that was ever left unsaid.

With a penchant for understanding the ways of the world, and a political proclivity that was rooted to the core in his love of his people, Rabbi Meir Kahane lived his life devoted to the cause of Ahavat Yisrael. Driven by an intense passion for justice that had rarely been seen before, and lamentably that seems to be especially found wanting today, he became the most controversial Jewish spokesman of our generation.

Born in 1932, Meir David Kahane was raised in a religious nationalistic home in New York. Son to a scholar, he learned at a very early age that Judaism was inseparable from Zionism. And that anti-Zionism was just another manifestation of anti-Semitism. He was taught also that, sadly, there were too few Jewish proponents of the biblical notion that posited that Jews should, unapologetically, stand tall. He understood even then that Jewish history, and destiny, was often determined by the bold actions of a few noble Jews. His heroes were Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Yosef Trumpledor, Menachem Begin, Shlomo Ben Yosef, Dov Gruner, Meir Feinstein, and their compatriots of the Irgun and Lehi, a too-small select group of modern Jewish warriors whose names were sadly unknown, or unspoken, in too-many Jewish homes.

The valiant struggle undertaken by these extraordinary Jewish heroes would leave its impact on Kahane. In response to the anti-Semitism that seemed ubiquitous, the unpretentious and private young man from New York would one day be drawn by circumstances to take a demonstrative public stance because others would not. Yet, that metamorphosis should not have surprised anyone, certainly not those who remember this once-quiet New York teenager hurling stones at the passing motorcade of British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin, an archenemy of Jewish nationalist aspirations.

Following his years at the Mir Yeshiva, he picked up a law degree from New York Law School, and a Master’s degree in International Relations from New York University along the way. He moved from being a modest neighborhood rabbi to copy editor and frequent contributor of the Jewish Press, to a neophyte rabble-rouser whose presence would soon shake the world.

Establishing the Jewish Defense League in 1968 in response to an anti-Semitism that proliferated seemingly unchecked in the neighborhoods of New York, he introduced with it a new breed of American Jew – one willing to fight back. As the JDL’s reputation and popularity grew, so did the condemnations, especially from those so-called Jewish leaders who had previously been empowered by their Jewish constituents to serve the need now taken up by the new Jewish defenders.

Nonetheless, the young men of the JDL continued to take to the streets undeterred, feared and respected by those with whom they did battle, and delivered a renewed message that Jewish blood was not cheap.

But Rabbi Kahane had a greater calling -- helping Jews everywhere. It was not enough, he opined, to serve only those Jews beleaguered only in our own neighborhoods. What of those who stood defenseless elsewhere, and who, he wondered, would feel their pain?

Not long after he founded the Jewish Defense League, Rabbi Kahane made a priority of taking up the cause of Soviet Jewry, a people subjugated and smothered by Soviet totalitarianism. Through extralegal and illegal means, the JDL directed its war against a détente that had masked the Soviet oppression of its religious minorities. No Soviet diplomat would walk the streets of New York freely, the Rabbi warned, if any Jew were compelled to walk the streets of Moscow in fear. In a bold and imaginative campaign to rein terror on the perpetrators, the JDL became a bone in the throat to Soviet interests in America. Numerous times the Soviet Union directed its complaints to the United States government and the United Nations assembly in an effort to curb the “Jewish hooligans,” protests that served only to bolster the latter’s fearless reputation, and determination.

In the end, when all was said and done, the JDL brought to the fore a Soviet Jewish problem that had been shrouded for too long, mobilized an apathetic American Jewish establishment, and befittingly laid claim to opening the iron curtain to the several hundred thousand Russian Jews who were reluctantly permitted to emigrate. All because there walked a rabbi who would not allow himself to sleep comfortably knowing that Jews elsewhere could not.

But most importantly, there was Israel. In keeping with the most fundamental principle of the Jewish Defense League’s ideology, Rabbi Kahane, his wife Libby, and their four children made aliyah in 1971. Welcomed at first as a modern American Jewish hero, the Rabbi soon made his political mark by antagonizing the prevailing political order. Challenging its neglect of the inevitable demographic clash with its own Arab population, and calling to question the ill-fated desire to seek peace at any cost with its neighboring Arab countries, Kahane became a small, though vocal, political alternative.

As Israel confronted an assault of Arab terrorism unleashed, coupled with proliferating social problems, his appeal and support grew. Elected to the Knesset and given a legitimate forum in 1984, and barred from running again in 1988 when the polls predicting an almost unprecedented rise in power, Rabbi Kahane’s name became synonymous with Israeli right-wing politics. “Extremism,” some called it. To be certain, it rendered a new terminology to Israel’s political lexicon:

 “Kahanism.”

Representing people, problems, and issues that had remained unaddressed by successive Israeli governments, he became a popular figure who threatened conventional politics. Remarkably, his impact was so great that the Likud government that presented itself as “nationalist” fought to keep him at bay with a fury that even eclipsed the old Labor governments’ efforts.

Always placing the fate of others above his own, he discounted any concern for his own reputation, faithfully leaving that judgment to God, and to history. As the bravest and loudest voice forewarning the Jews in Israel, and elsewhere, of the impending dangers of a specious and spurious yet all-encompassing quest for Middle East peace, he believed that history would certainly vindicate him.

Long before the fraudulent peace of Oslo, when all others were still hailing the accomplishments of an earlier Camp David surrender to appeasement, Rabbi Kahane spoke about the dangers engendered by the lack of Jewish resolve. He warned that this perilous march to peace, based foolishly on illusions and the best of intentions, would ultimately lead Israel on the path of disaster. As seemed his duty, he shamelessly reminded those who would listen that the road to Hell was paved with good intentions, and, too many dead Jews.

Rabbi Kahane once wrote the words that perhaps more than any others explained this march of madness:

“Not all Jews are heroes, and there are those who grow weary of the long struggle, and the longer wait.  And weariness carries with it weakness.  Weakness of the body, and weakness of the spirit.  Weakness that persuades the Jew to believe, that which just yesterday, he knew to be nonsense. Weakness that prepares the ground for the Jew to believe in madness, and in illusions.”

For him, there was only one thing worse than illusion – self-delusion, an enterprise he feared the Jews had begun to master all too well.

In 1924, the prolific Jewish writer Maurice Samuel, daring to call Jews a “separate and holy people,” concluded his book You Gentiles with the following: “…I console myself with the thought that if this book offends by its assertiveness, God knows that the infinite tactfulness of thousands of other Jews seems to have offended no less. Whatever we do we are damned – and I would rather be damned standing up than lying down.”

Rabbi Meir Kahane, was a rabbi who was in fact damned – damned standing up, but never lying down. His writings, his speeches, and his audacious actions on behalf of his fellow Jews gave no quarter. As certain as the sunrise, his words and his deeds carried with them the assured belief that they invoked the blessings of Heaven.

As the founder and leader of the Jewish Defense League, and then the Kach Movement in Israel, he was condemned, and imprisoned, too-numerous times for his radical actions. And at other times, for his views.  Yet he remained undeterred. Articulating a philosophy pregnant with moral clarity, he once wrote:

“The real prisoners are the ones who walk the streets daily, knowing that they should do a certain thing, and are afraid to do it.  They are serving life sentences. If a person believes in something, and does it – he is never in prison – he is always free.”

Never, then, was there a freer man than Rabbi Meir Kahane.

Rabbi Kahane, for two decades warned us through word and through deed, of the impending catastrophes that we would inevitably face if we chose to follow Washington, and place our trust in princes, rather than the path prescribed by Torah. The Rabbi warned us that when the final showdown would come, the support of these “so-called friends” of Zion would, to use the language of Pierre Van Passan, “evaporate like snow on a summer day’s sun.”

With the nations of the world in general, and Israel’s Arab neighbors in particular, the Rabbi understood that there would only be peace through strength.  Not because they loved us, but because they could be made to respect us.

Rabbi Meir Kahane was an unconventional genius.

 His name was, and will forever remain, synonymous with Jewish activism. Principled in purpose, he feared no fight. Therefore it was understandable that the establishment feared his ability to capture and radicalize the hearts and minds of a generation of youth that had been left with little direction, and even less purpose.

A prolific writer, his pen left a penetrating mark on the generation that was influenced by his many books and frequent articles. Tireless, he spoke everywhere, and to everyone, and galvanized a generation of Jews that began to question its parents’ indifference to the life and death issues that he brought to the fore.

The cry of “Never Again,” if ever heard before the rabbi established the Jewish Defense League, was certainly too faint. Rabbi Meir Kahane, and the Jewish Defense League, proclaimed it loudly, and proudly. And it was nothing less than a revolution in Jewish affairs. “Never Again” did not mean that never again would the Jewish people be confronted with anti-Semitism, pogroms, and worse. In the galut, that promise cannot be made, nor kept. But “Never Again” did mean, that never again would the Jews stand idly by, while the anti-Semitic beast reared its pernicious face. It was a chant – a promise – a that became the hallmark of a new Jew. It was a message that instilled a measure of fear in those who made sport of hating Jews. It was a compelling wake-up call to the Jews who had long served as their victims. And it sent a stern and menacing signal to the Jewish leaders who for too long seemed indifferent to both.

He would often remind us that the Jew needed to stand on two legs – the religious, and the nationalistic.

Rabbi Kahane was in every sense, a unique man, a visionary. But he was more. So much more. No political visionary ever knew as much about the New York Yankees as did the rabbi; and no Yankee fan ever climbed more police barricades than did he. No biblical scholar comprehended international law as well, and certainly no international jurist ever understood the Five Books of Moses as did the venerated and often berated rabbi. Perhaps more politically astute than anyone we will ever meet, he often, nevertheless, refused to be diplomatic. You see, he understood, that one doesn’t compromise Jewish values.

With one leg fully entrenched in Israel, and the other still planted in America, the once-quiet pulpit rabbi from Howard Beach, New York reluctantly became an international celebrity. In the matter of a few short years, he came to champion Jewish causes everywhere, and in his own unique manner, left life-lasting reverberations in his wake. It was not history that created this man, but this man who helped fashion history.

He would often remind us that the Jew needed to stand on two legs – the religious, and the nationalistic. Those who stood on only one, he argued, were crippled. And never had one man stood taller on both legs.

Bold, brazen, and never bashful, Rabbi Kahane commanded the ability to engage in intellectual discourse that made even the most erudite opponent shrink before him. Or, he could shift gears effortlessly, and communicate masterfully, with the young and disenfranchised.

The rabbi often addressed groups a thousand strong, and at times, spent endless hours passionately mentoring a single lost soul. Because he understood, that that one lone soul might one day himself alter the course of Jewish history. This endless passion to serve his people, coupled with the determined drive to pursue justice, was in every sense, his raison d’être.

More serious than any man we have ever met, he balanced that with a wonderful sense of humor that always “humanized” the man they wanted us to see as a Jewish outcast.

Often late for appointments, he was always the first to rush to the aid of a Jew in peril. Talented, and of brilliant mind, he was tortured by the notion of Jews suffering, whether in Manhattan, or Moscow.

He feared only God.

He was instrumental in disseminating the type of pride that brought many a young Jew to proudly place the knitted kippa on his head. Finding little time, or use, for sleep, the rabbi’s twenty-hour workday was never enough. Like Ze’ev Jabotinsky, a generation and a half before him, he saw things that others could not. And as was true of Jabotinsky, he was branded a “pariah” by the established Jewish world, which wanted him so much – to simply go away.

Doors to the established Jewish institutions were regularly closed to him – sometimes, as in the case of the campus Hillels throughout the United States, they were literally, physically chained, all in the endeavor to keep him out. Yet, not surprisingly, his ideas still seeped through.

Who really appreciated this remarkable man? Ask an old Holocaust survivor, who knew too well what it meant to be forgotten by American Jewry, while European Jewry burned in flames. Ask the frightened American Jew, living alone in a once Jewish neighborhood, fearful of the anti-Semitism that he felt every day. Ask the Jewish settler in holy Hevron – resting-place of our forefathers - deserted by his own Israeli government, while surrounded by a marauding pack of wolves. Ask the more than a quarter of a million Russian Jews, prisoners of a totalitarian Soviet regime for over fifty years, who had their fate, their future, and their freedom tied to the radical rabbi – a rabbi who was willing to go to jail, for them.

Rare indeed was the man who was willing to shake heaven and earth and sacrifice almost all for his fellow man. Unwilling to compromise the truth, and bereft of any concern for political correctness or conventional expectations, Rabbi Meir Kahane taught us that the life in one’s years is infinitely more important than the years in one’s life.

Felled by a murderous assassin’s bullet in New York in November 1990, he is now gone.

The loss of one great man, and our world will never be the same. It is no doubt the most important thing that the rabbi would ever teach – that one person, could indeed, be the difference.

How different our world would have been had Rabbi Meir Kahane decided that the pain and suffering of the Jews everywhere was not his pain. Or if he had not stood in opposition to the ongoing Jewish retreat from the territories liberated in the 1967 Six Day War, an event that should have instead ushered in the age of redemption. Or, had he simply accepted that these things were sometimes better left alone. God knows, our Jewish leaders said it was so.

Without the rabbi, we mournfully lack the vocal and vociferous outcry against the perfidious and misbegotten peace process. More importantly, we shall forever miss the fury of the same noble rabbi, not here today to lead the voices of reason, and demonstrate in angry protest against the road map to madness.

“Never Again” did mean, that never again would the Jews stand idly by, while the anti-Semitic beast reared its pernicious face. It was a chant – a promise – a that became the hallmark of a new Jew.Tragically, it seems that we really didn’t deserve him, and must now fend for ourselves.

The message of Rabbi Meir Kahane is still quite clear today. And for the Jewish people wandering seemingly leaderless in a desert of our own creation, he is needed more than ever before.

We stand today at the moment of truth, called on to muster the courage to break with illusion and foolishness. We stand today a moment that finds us still masters of our own fate, having learned from that noble rabbi that much can be accomplished through dedication, and the faith and the fight of the few against the many.

His legacy should not to be misunderstood, nor left to the historians who so often rewrite it. The message is as clear as it is powerfully poignant: If we march forward with the courage that is called for, guided by Torah and unencumbered by the need to appease unappeasable opponents, then future generations will indeed bless us. If, on the other hand, we equivocate and vacillate, misled by a fearful and faint-hearted temperament while our fate and that of our brethren in Israel and elsewhere still hang in the balance, we shall forever regret the moment of truth when we might have achieved glory, and were found wanting.

The struggle continues.  And it continues without the voice, or the hand, of the most noble Jew of our generation.

And, it seems so much harder today to say: “Od lo avda tikvateynu.” That “our hope is not yet lost.”

Meir Jolovitz is a past national executive director of the Zionist Organization of America, and formerly associated with the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. He had previously served as national chairman of the Jewish Defense League.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/21227?utm_source=activetrail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

POST SCRIPT: Meir Kahane was far from perfect in his personal life, this post is about the recognition of his great accomplishments with all his human flaws. PM

But scratch the surface, and heart-wrenching stories are revealed. These girls have been removed from their family homes by court order as a result of severe neglect or physical, sexual or emotional abuse — or any combination thereof....

At-risk youth'I could have been on the streets if not for Beit Ruth'

It takes a village to heal Israel’s abused teen girls

NY philanthropist Susan Ashner celebrates opening of new school at Beit Ruth, marking growth for the holistic therapeutic refuge for young female victims

Beit Ruth co-founder and board chair Susan Ashner checks in with one of the residents, July 2017

AFULA — Susan Ashner wasn’t dressed appropriately, but that didn’t stop her. In white pants and heeled metallic slide sandals, she carefully stepped her way through a construction site in this northern Israeli city on a blisteringly hot afternoon this past July.

Sitting down on a randomly strewn cinder block, Ashner took a moment to reflect on this building rising from the ground at Beit Ruth, the unique educational and therapeutic residential village for vulnerable and at-risk teen girls she and her husband Michael Ashner co-founded 14 years ago. The New York philanthropist couple’s dream of a proper school for the residents was coming to fruition.

Flash forward four months, and construction of the $3.4 million facility is now complete. Beit Ruth’s residents have been studying and participating in enrichment programs there since mid-October.

New school building at Beit Ruth village under construction, July 2017

The school has the capacity to accommodate several hundred residential and day students. It also has a dedicated lecture hall for Beit Ruth’s advocacy and educational outreach programs on issues related to at-risk girls for key groups such as teachers, school directors, medical professionals, and police.
While the school was built with future growth in mind, Beit Ruth currently has only 45 residents, all who appear to the casual observer like typical teenage girls. They dress according to the latest trends, know the lyrics to popular songs, and swoon over famous movie actors and rock stars.

Beit Ruth village, Afula, Israel

But scratch the surface, and heart-wrenching stories are revealed. These girls have been removed from their family homes by court order as a result of severe neglect or physical, sexual or emotional abuse — or any combination thereof. Many are runaways.Beit Ruth, with its holistic therapeutic approach designed specifically to address the needs of at-risk and vulnerable girls, is often these girls’ last — and best — hope for turning their lives around.

“I could have gotten to the point of my being on the streets if I hadn’t gone to live at Beit Ruth,” said S., a 23-year-old Beit Ruth graduate.

Thanks to individualized academic programs that catch them up on months or years of missed material, Beit Ruth residents graduate high school, some with full matriculation. Many graduates, like S. and D., a 22-year-old Beit Ruth graduate who has returned to live temporarily at the village to mentor younger residents, go on to serve in the IDF and then study at university or work.

At 14, S. did not get along with her mother and was physically, emotionally and sexually abused by her 16-year-old boyfriend. Today things are different for her.

“I have a good relationship with my mother and, although I will remember that boyfriend’s abuse, I don’t have to suffer from it and I know that I didn’t do anything wrong. He did,” S. said.

Teacher Orit Ohev Zion teaches a small class at Beit Ruth

D. is thankful for important life lessons she learned at Beit Ruth. Among them are the strength to say “no,” recognize her own worth, and stand her ground and speak up for herself.

“I also know how to take responsibility for both the bad and the good, and to hold myself to high standards,” she said.

From streets to school

 

Many of Beit Ruth’s 13- to 18-year-old residents have actually been on the streets. One current 13-year-old was using drugs and alcohol and was involved in prostitution at age 12. With her sick, single mother neglectful and her father out of the picture, the girl was victimized by the father of one of her friends, who pimped both girls.

“With the girl having been out of school for a year, a social worker approached her and asked her if she wanted to be removed from her home,” said Iris Twerski, Beit Ruth’s managing director. (Beit Ruth is granted physical custody of its residents, while the girls’ parents retain legal custody.According to Twerski, Beit Ruth was the only realistic option for this girl.

“She was traumatized and needed to heal. Girls like this cannot be placed in a boarding school, especially one where there are boys and men. Boys do well in co-ed programs, but girls don’t,” Twerski said.

“We’ve had girls here who have been abused in mixed-gender facilities,” she said.

Beit Ruth teacher Pnina Amitay speaks with one of her students, July 2017

Beit Ruth (Hebrew for “Ruth’s House,” and named for the biblical heroine) is the only female-led residential village and school in Israel of its kind.

The country has other residential programs for at-risk girls, but Beit Ruth is the only one where virtually every member of the staff — from the directors to the house coordinators, to the social workers, teachers, therapists and counselors — is a woman.

“A hug from a female counselor is different from a hug from a male counselor,” said mentor D.
The Beit Ruth leadership cites Welfare Ministry statistics that 30,000 teen girls in Israel are at at-risk, of whom 1,000 need to be removed from their homes. There is a shortage of institutions and programs to provide the necessary response to this crisis, and those that do exist have long waiting lists.

From left: Beit Ruth managing director Iris Twerski, executive director Danielle Burenstein, public council chair Hanna Azoulay Hasfari, and co-founder and board chair Susan Ashner at Beit Ruth, Afula, Israel, July 2017.

One hundred and ninety girls from all sectors of Israeli society have resided at Beit Ruth since 2006 (in Afula, and at a prior location in Rishon Lezion). Many more than the current 45 residents could benefit from the specialized program. The plan is to triple the village’s capacity to 150 girls in the not too distant future.


To that end, Beit Ruth’s board is engaged in an $800,000 capital campaign. Board chair Ashner, who together with her husband has to date given $11 million to Beit Ruth, hopes to establish a $35 million endowment to support capital expansions and improvements, and the village’s operating budget.
Seventy percent of Beit Ruth’s $2 million annual operating budget is covered by the Welfare Ministry, with the remainder from donors in the US. WIZO (the Women’s International Zionist Organization) donated the land on which the village was built.

Free to help themselves

 

Although girls are directed to Beit Ruth by a court order, there is nothing that compels them to live at the village. Unlike lock-in facilities with security that prevents teenagers from leaving, Beit Ruth is an open facility that relies on mutual trust and cooperation between staff and residents. The girls are free to leave the village at any time, but in reality most are content to be in a self-contained environment where home and school are on the same campus and there is no need to venture out alone.


“We work with the girls on values and taking personal responsibility. It’s about giving positive motivation and reinforcement. We never punish unless it’s for violent behavior,” said Twerski.

Two friends at Beit Ruth hug outside one of the residences at the village

Girls must sign on to a variety of conditions for acceptance to Beit Ruth, which include participation in all aspects of the village’s therapeutic program: Academics, enrichment activities (music, drama, art, sports), psychotherapy, and home life.

The girls do not live in dormitories, but rather in large houses designed and built according to specifications that support the Beit Ruth philosophy. Each two-story group home accommodates up to 15 residents. Upstairs are are five bedrooms (each shared by three girls) and a room for a therapist, who is present every day.

The communal bathrooms are located in the open hallways (deliberately not ensuite within the bedrooms), so that girls with suicidal or self-harm tendencies cannot lock themselves away and out of sight.

The staff-resident ratio is very high, and staff members are present in the houses 24/7 on a rotating basis.

“There is no feeling of hierarchy. The girls can turn to any staff member at any time,” said staff member Mor Ben Simhon-Lipin.

On her visit, Ashner joined the girls in one of the houses for a lunch of roast chicken, roasted vegetables and salads at the long dining table on the main floor, where there are also bathrooms, staff offices, and a living area.

All meals are taken together family-style. A paid cook produces the meals in the kitchen, but the girls are expected to help prepare the food, set the table and clean up. They are equally responsible for keeping all other areas of the house tidy.

“The idea is to give the girls a sense of normalcy, a sense of what it is like to live in a functional family,” said actress Hanna Azoulay Hasfari, who chairs Beit Ruth’s public council and occasionally takes the girls on theater outings.

The one exception to this normalcy is a severe restriction on computer and social media use. Permitted only a half hour per day of social media access, the girls do not walk around staring at smartphone screens like typical teenagers.

“The internet is too dangerous for these girls,” said Ben Simhon-Lipin.

Haven on a high wire

Beit Ruth is a haven, but it must still abide by Israeli laws and regulations requiring the teenage residents to return home for a visit once every three weeks, if they so desire. Girls may choose to maintain a relationship with their parents, even if going home means putting themselves in a vulnerable position.

“A girl can deny her trauma. It often takes two years in therapy at Beit Ruth until she faces the issue and deals with it,” said Ben Simhon-Lipin.

The village’s community was rocked earlier this year by the suicide of 22-year-old graduate Avigayil Lavi, who had been a long-term victim of incest.

Beit Ruth co-founder Susan Ashner at construction site of new school at the village, July 2017

Lavi’s tragic death highlighted the importance of getting girls into treatment at Beit Ruth as early as possible (Lavi arrived at the village as an older teen), and of increasing support services for young women after they age out of Beit Ruth and other programs for 13-18 year olds.

Talk of Lavi brought tears to Ashner’s eyes on her visit to Beit Ruth this summer.

“It is extremely difficult to talk about these things, and about the need for Beit Ruth, but it is so, so important because this could be your sister, or your wife. These girls are the future mothers of Israel,” she said.

Ashner was forthcoming about her love of Israel and her feminism, but less so about events in her own past that drove her to found and sustain Beit Ruth.

“All I will say is that I grew up similar to these girls, and unfortunately I didn’t have a Beit Ruth to go to,” she said.

• sexual abuse
• incest
• child abuse
• child sex abuse
• substance abuse
• teenagers
• Girls
• therapy
• at-risk youth

https://www.timesofisrael.com/it-takes-a-village-to-heal-israels-abused-teen-girls/?utm_source=The+Times+of+Israel+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=11abd1ce8e-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_11_06&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_adb46cec92-11abd1ce8e-55186525

Organizations need “multiple, accessible avenues of complaint,” as a federal task force concluded. These avenues should be blazingly obvious, not buried in a corporate policy that nobody reads. They should include anonymous reporting options. They should feed into a process that’s confidential and fair, including to the accused.

The Conspiracy of Inaction on Sexual Abuse and Harassment

 

Caution --- This Video Contains Sensitive Material In Brutal Adult Terminology:

When Gretchen Carlson spoke out about her experience of workplace sexual harassment, it inspired women everywhere to take their power back and tell the world what happened to them. In a remarkable, fierce talk, she tells her story -- and identifies three specific things we can all do to create safer places to work. "We will no longer be underestimated, intimidated or set back," Carlson says. "We will stand up and speak up and have our voices heard. We will be the women we were meant to be."

The Horace Mann School in the Bronx

I caught the journalism bug in high school. I was fortunate to be a scholarship student at a rigorous New York private school with a weekly newspaper, and some of the older students I admired taught me the power that the written word could have.

When we complained verbally to teachers or administrators about a problem, they could ignore us. 

When we put our arguments in writing, they tended to pay attention. So we became teenage crusaders, inveighing against perceived injustices. Sometimes, the subjects were sophomoric (“censorship” of the talent show), but often they were serious (inequality, racism, South African divestment).

Three decades later, I look back on the experience with deep gratitude. I also look back with haunting regret.

For all of our crusading, we ignored the biggest story at the school. We were aware of the rumors — the teachers who made comments about girls’ bodies, the teacher suspiciously friendly with female students, the music teacher solicitous of male students.

But we never wrote about it. As best as I can remember, we didn’t even talk about writing about it. We didn’t know how. It seemed too dark, too uncertain.

In 2012, the truth came out. My school — Horace Mann — had tolerated sexual molestation for decades. Administrators whose most solemn responsibility was protecting children instead chose to look the other way and protect child abusers. The music teacher, a cultish figure named Johannes Somary, was the worst abuser during my time. One of his victims later committed suicide.

The current torrent of harassment revelations — following Jodi Kantor’s and Megan Twohey’s Times exposé of Harvey Weinstein — has caused me to think back on high school again, because every big case has had something in common with Horace Mann.

People knew. 

Even if they didn’t know the details — I didn’t know what Somary was actually doing — they knew that something was wrong. At Fox News, many knew that Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly mistreated women. At ABC, The New Republic and NPR, respectively, people talked about the harassment by Mark Halperin, Leon Wieseltier and Michael Oreskes. In Hollywood, people talked about Weinstein and Kevin Spacey — not to mention Donald Trump, who nonetheless became a heavily promoted reality star.

As the screenwriter Scott Rosenberg has written about Weinstein, “Everybody knew.” (The full quotation includes a colloquial adverb of emphasis between “everybody” and “knew.”)

“Maybe we didn’t know the degree. The magnitude of the awfulness,” Rosenberg continued. “But we knew something.”

And yet no one did anything about it. People were afraid to, or didn’t know how. So they — we — became part of an unwitting conspiracy of inaction.

This conspiracy has spanned the relatively powerless, like interns, secretaries and teenagers, to the wealthy and famous, as well as every level of power in between. Jill Abramson, my old boss, is one of the toughest journalists I know. Still, as a midlevel manager two decades ago, she didn’t go over the head of her old boss — Oreskes — to report his behavior at The Times, as she regretfully said last week.

Post-Weinstein, the emphasis has been on holding other abusers accountable. So far, each seems to deserve his delayed consequences. (And, yes, the severity of the various abuses varies.) I hope the exposés continue.

But post facto truth and punishment are not enough. We also need to figure out how to prevent future abuse. We need to make inaction feel unacceptable.

Doing so will require changes from both organizations and individuals. Every workplace and school should be asking itself: Do people here know how to report a suspicion of abuse? Do they feel comfortable doing so even when, as is typical, they have only an incomplete sense of it?

At most places, the answers remain no and no.

Organizations need “multiple, accessible avenues of complaint,” as a federal task force concluded. These avenues should be blazingly obvious, not buried in a corporate policy that nobody reads. They should include anonymous reporting options. They should feed into a process that’s confidential and fair, including to the accused.

Every leader should also read case studies, to understand how frequently other leaders, at Horace Mann, NPR and elsewhere, have bungled these situations, usually through cowardice. Often, a victim or someone else did summon the courage to come forward, only to have the institution do little or nothing.

But the changes can’t be only about policies and organizations. They need to be personal, too. I’m guessing that you get angry when you think about the abuse committed by Weinstein, O’Reilly, Trump or Somary — about the long-lasting misery they have inflicted on other human beings. I certainly do.

The next time I see something that doesn’t seem quite right, I’m going to remember that anger. One conspiracy of inaction is more than enough for a lifetime.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/05/opinion/sexual-harassment-weinstein-horace-mann.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=0

Let me repeat it for those who came in late: The reason we keep getting acts of terrorism is because we keep importing terrorists...

How’s “diversity” working out for you?

 

Do the math and you will understand why we keep having terror attacks

Why is this so complicated? 

Especially after Tuesday’s jihadist slayings in Manhattan, the cry arose throughout the airwaves – why do these things keep happening?

So let me spell it out as simply as I can. Are you sitting down? Okay – here goes:
The reason we keep getting acts of terrorism is because we keep importing terrorists.
That is not politics. That is mathematics.


Let me repeat it for those who came in late: The reason we keep getting acts of terrorism is because we keep importing terrorists.

For instance, like most Americans, I did not know, until recently, that since the early 1990s we had a program named the “Diversity Visa Lottery.” So each year some 50,000 people are invited into our country from hellholes all around the globe, like Uzbekistan. Over there it is 96.3 percent Muslim, coincidentally.

That is where the Manhattan murderer came from…and, along with the rest, was welcomed with smiles over the years from types like NY Gov Cuomo and NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio and Sen. Chuck Schumer. Their smiles vanished after the attack when they had to explain how it happened on their support for diversity uber alles.

But that did not stop them from taking the stage to further dump on Trump and even though ashen-faced from shame, they continued to grandstand their Liberal pieties. As if none of this was their doing and if it came again between them and us, between migrants and citizens, they’d still choose the migrants.

President Trump wants to end the diversity lottery program. Trump wants to limit immigration altogether. Trump knows the math.

Let me repeat it for those who came in late: The reason we keep getting acts of terrorism is because we keep importing terrorists.

The very definition of the program, in view of the word “lottery,” means that we are GAMBLING with our security. 

Gambling is okay for horses; not for people. Betting on people, strangers especially, is a sucker bet. Under these terms, we don’t really know who’s coming. 

In other words, we don’t really know who we’re betting on. Democrats and even some Republicans don’t care.

Trump cares. “The safety of our citizens comes first,” says Trump.

What a novel concept if you are a Liberal.

To the question why – better ask where.

It was in Israel where all those deadly car and truck rammings began.

But the world and its experts took it to mean a Jewish problem rather than a universal problem. So nobody gave a damn. Let the Israelis deal with it; it’s got nothing to do with us. So they said, knocking on wood. They refused to learn…learn that, sooner or later, the same jihadists will come knocking anywhere and everywhere. 

From the terror tunnels of Gaza to the streets of New York, they will come.

Now even here jihadists feel they can get away with murder so long as they’ve got airheads like CNN’s Jake Tapper to assure us that Allahu Akhabar really means peace.

Tell it to the dead, Jake.

It’s a wonderful world of immigration jihad so long as they’ve got the fools of the world on their side – from de Blasio in New York City to Merkel in Berlin.

Now one man on a diversity LOTTERY visa from Uzbekistan comes to Manhattan and murders eight people.

We gambled. We lost.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/21215?utm_source=activetrail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl