The blood that is pumped out of a man’s heart is the exact same blood that returns to that heart. We have reached a crisis point because we have spent too much time going to the wrong addresses when the most important address is right at our doorstep.

 

 Garbage In Garbage Out!

 

Jonathan Sacks, morality and Facebook algorithms 

 

Before blaming a company for fomenting partisan hate, the late rabbi's teachings would have us take a good look at yourselves in the mirror 

 

 

 

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”
–Pogo, Walt Kelly

Facebook whistleblower Francis Haugen probably thought she’d driven her message home when she recently recommended the removal of algorithms on Facebook, telling the US Congress it was “because I think we don’t want computers deciding what we focus on!” When it comes to computers telling people what to do, whose blood would not boil?

Of course, as with most such reductionist lines, Haugen was able to appeal to our emotions through oversimplification. But computers don’t decide, we do. And even if we allow computers to steer us, those computers (more precisely, algorithms) were all designed by human beings who are ultimately no different from us.

The problem with Haugen’s claims goes beyond the misleading nature of her line about computers making decisions for us. Her more substantive position – “I’m a strong proponent of chronological ranking, ordering by time” instead of by algorithm – is like suggesting that television remove its visual component and that its programs only be heard and not seen.

I know. I tried it. Although the default on the Facebook timeline is what the algorithms calculate you “most want to see,” up until very recently there was an icon on the sidebar that allowed you to see everything posted by your contacts chronologically. If you are anything like me, you would have lasted less than two minutes! Do you really want to see what someone you barely know is having for breakfast? Or whether anybody can help with their carpool in Minneapolis?

True, there are many ways that algorithms can determine what you want to see, some of which might be more manipulative than others. And I am not saying that there is no room for more responsibility from the companies that use algorithms, and that government has no role to play in regulating them. But there is an important part of the equation that never seems to get mentioned here.

The cries for more responsibility are all aimed at government or industry. Yet as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (whose first yahrzeit we are now marking) repeatedly pointed out, in a liberal state, these institutions are not primarily designed to promote morality or to enforce it. Of course, they have a role to play: Industry should understand that the legitimate desire for profits does not make everything legitimate; and government needs to support whatever basic moral consensus still exists. But as Sacks wrote in his last aptly titled major book, Morality, morality’s home is primarily in the third sector – voluntary communities that are formed around tighter and more rigorous definitions of what we should be doing to maximize who we are as human beings.

Accordingly, one of Sacks’s most valiant crusades was the call for individuals and communities to step up and take responsibility for the moral state of society. He argued that we have reached a crisis point because we have spent too much time going to the wrong addresses when the most important address is right at our doorstep.

The issue becomes clearer with a Biblical metaphor, as explained by the famous 19th-century rabbi and commentator, Malbim (Rabbi Meir Leibush Wisser). After telling us that, “He who tends a fig tree will enjoy its fruit, and he who cares for his master will be honored,“ the Bible tells us that, “As in water, face answers to face, so the heart of man to man” (Proverbs 27:18-19). The metaphor is based on the mirror image of our face that we see when we look at water. So too, claims the Bible, is the response of a person’s heart. Malbim understands this quite literally. For him, it is saying that the blood that is pumped out of a man’s heart is the exact same blood that returns to that heart. As for the teaching, he expands it broadly, telling us that what happens to us is often a direct reflection of how we act in a wide variety of contexts.

Does this not sound a little (a lot!) like algorithms. These programs don’t make up anything on their own. Their output – like the reflection of our face in the water – is completely responsive to our input. In this respect, then, the blame society is aiming at social media algorithms is like throwing a rock at the water reflecting the ugliness of your own face.

The result is that we turn to forces outside and tell them, “Show me a prettier face.” In the short term, that may happen. Algorithms can be adjusted to appeal to our better sides or, at least, to mitigate some of the more significant negative outcomes. However, as Facebook has already anticipated, that will lead to less user time, meaning less business. And that may lead to other companies finding a way to fill the vacuum and supply us with what we seem to want.

For if we are allowing ourselves to wallow in partisan hate and never looking at the other side, it means that on some level this is what we prefer. If we are willing to read things the reliability of which is questionable, it means that this is what we want. If we let ourselves be drawn to the bizarre, the silly and the sexually enticing, this too is what we are ultimately choosing. As in real life, knowing that any of these practices is not optimal is not the same as deciding to live otherwise. No doubt, others, including Mark Zuckerberg, have a part in the blame. But what about yourselves?

A more serious and introspective society would understand that there is a deeper problem that goes beyond Facebook and the lack of government regulation.

 As Rabbi Sacks never got tired of reminding us, the home of that problem is within ourselves. 

 https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/jonathan-sacks-morality-and-facebook-algorithms/?utm_source=The+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=daily-edition-2021-10-25&utm_medium=email

 

Keeping Kids Safe!

 

Rahel Bayar will speak to Schechter parents about boundaries and abuse

Rahel Bayar runs workshops on sexual abuse and how to recognize it.

 

On Tuesday, October 26, the Solomon Schechter Day School of Bergen County in New Milford will host a webinar for its parent volunteers with Rahel Bayar, a former sex crimes prosecutor who grew up in Milburn. She’s a lawyer who now offers training to schools, camps, and other institutions on how to prevent and respond to abuse and misconduct.

The Zoom session will teach about boundaries and abuse.

The workshop for parents follows one that Ms. Bayar ran for SSDS faculty in August about boundaries and how abusers pursue their victims, and another, last week, teaching faculty members about sexual harassment.

“Anyone interfacing with any of our students should have these workshops about our healthy boundaries,” Dr. Ilana Kustanowitz, SSDS’s psychologist, said.

On Wednesday, October 27, Ms. Bayar also is scheduled to run workshops with SSDS middle school students on cyberbullying, internet safety, and sexting. In the spring, she is scheduled to return to talk with lower school students on safe and unsafe touching.

“Parents have asked for us to have these sorts of lessons for these kids,” Dr. Kustanowitz said. “She’s an incredible presenter.”

Ms. Bayar earned a law degree at Seton Hall University after studying at Rutgers as an undergraduate. In 2009 she started working in the Bronx D.A.’s office, prosecuting sex crimes. After almost seven years there, she went to work for an investigative firm, T&M Protection Resources, in Manhattan; she was in the division that investigated sexual misconduct allegations, both current and historical.

“All of us in that division were former sex crime prosecutors, so we knew what it means to conduct those investigations from a trauma-informed lens,” she said. “There were a lot of investigations where there was a current allegation of something that couldn’t be handled by law enforcement because there was no allegation of a crime, but it was concerning in a school setting. A school would bring us in to conduct an investigation.”

She opened her own practice, the Bayar Group, last November, to share her expertise in preventing abuse. Ms. Bayar said that her work is split between Jewish and non-Jewish institutions; among the other local Jewish schools that she has worked with are the Moriah School in Englewood, Yeshiva Ben Porat Yosef and the Frisch School in Paramus, and Ma’ayanot Yeshiva High School for Girls in Teaneck.

“It’s wonderful to see so many schools taking a proactive approach” to preventing abuse, she said.

Questions of child abuse have come to the fore in the Jewish community in recent years, with high-profile journalistic exposes of abuse within Jewish schools and Jewish organizations helping to lead to laws in New York and New Jersey that temporarily extended the statute of limitation for lawsuits alleging childhood sexual abuse.

Ms. Bayar said that parents concerned about their children’s safety — and which parent isn’t? — should be looking at what their school’s policies are. But first, “even before you’re asking a school about their policies, you want to feel comfortable asking a school whether they have policies,” she said. “Make sure the response isn’t defensive or negative. Transparency is important.”

So what are the best practice child safety policies?

To start with, Ms. Bayar said, there should be a mandated reporting policy that spells out what faculty and staff are supposed to do. It has to reflect state law. It has to spell out the different types of possible abuse: physical abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect or maltreatment. It has to clearly state the requirement to report to the appropriate state or local authority, and to “make it very clear that there is a requirement to report externally.

“The second piece you want to look at are what we call boundary guidelines,” she said. “Boundary guidelines are about protecting students, as well as creating a dividing line” between behaviors that are totally acceptable in the school community and those “that one would consider grooming behaviors and are really red flag behaviors with students.”

Grooming, Ms. Bayar said, is “a slow and steady seduction of a child that involves a breaking down of boundaries between that adult and that child, so that that child learns to trust that adult. It looks like an adult identifying a vulnerability in that kid. So that when that adult does something bad, touches the child or has the child touch them, or exposes them to something sexual,” the child most likely will not disclose the abuse.

“When you set the red line, it protects everybody. It protects faculty and staff from creating an appearance of impropriety. It protects students from someone who may be interested in grooming them.

“There are a lot of different types of boundaries. You have your physical boundaries, you have your emotional boundaries, you have your behavior boundaries, you have the boundaries on one-on-one interactions with students, both in person and in Zoom. You have social media and electronic communication boundaries.”

These boundaries involve questions of “navigating conversations with students and not talking about personal information,” as well as “issues of bathrooms and overnight trips and athletics and coaching and your home and students’ homes, especially in a community where you may live in the same community and share Shabbat meals,” she said.

The third piece is a sexual harassment policy detailing how staff should interact with each other.

Along with these policies, “you need to ensure the school is actually training effectively in the policies,” Ms. Bayar said. “That does not mean a video or a check-the-box approach or someone reading down a list of all the things you can’t do. The training has to be able to bring the faculty and staff into the why behind the guidelines, the why behind the mandated reporting, the why when it comes to all the different child safety practices.”

And then there are the policies that apply to the students.

“You want to make very clear what behavior is acceptable or not,” Ms. Bayar said. “Are there effective anti-harassment, anti-bullying, and anti-hazing policies? If a student sends an inappropriate picture to another student, or sexually assaults them, what is the policy of the school?

“Every state is different in terms of what their expectations are, and every insurance company is different in terms of their expectations. But we shouldn’t be doing this just based on the standard expectation. We should be rising above that and saying how we should create a safe community.

“As a parent, I would want to know if there is an allegation made about boundary crossing behavior, or an allegation made about a form of abuse that doesn’t fall under mandated reporting, that it’s still going to be reported and there’s also transparency,” she continued.

When you think about people who might sexually abuse kids, “a lot of times you think about the scary, creepy person you see on ‘Law and Order SVU,’” she said. But — surprise! — television does not accurately reflect reality.

“Ninety-one percent of kids who are abused are abused by someone they or their family knows,” Ms. Bayar said. “In order to sexually abuse a child, you can’t be a creepy, scary person, because no one would leave you alone with their kids. It means to sexually abuse a child, you have to be good with kids. It means a predator has to fly under the radar and connect with a child in a way that doesn’t seem to be creepy or scary to anyone else.

“A lot of people who abuse kids find themselves in child-facing organizations, in schools and in camps, because that’s where inhibitions are down and people have more access to kids,” she said.

“Effective training requires an understanding of how grooming works, why it is effective, and how to counteract it. That’s part of what training in a school needs. You don’t want to have people in your community ignoring red flags.

“That’s why every school should have boundaries guidelines. How should we interact to help a vulnerable kid, and what’s not appropriate? What is grooming and what is allowed?” she said.

For example: “Best practice is a teacher should not drive a student alone in a car. The truth is no teacher should be driving students, period. Now, let’s say a teacher decides, ‘I’m fine, I’m not a danger so it’s fine for me to drive kids.’ Parents see that and perceive that either a teacher is doing something nice or this is something that’s allowed.

“In a school that says this is allowed, a predator sees he can use his car as a way to groom a child. No one will think twice about it because teachers A, B, and C drive kids alone in a car. It lets a predator see that this school is not a tough target.

“If you have guidelines and draw the line that no one gets to drive a kid to school alone, it means that when you have a predator in the mix, they realize this school is a tough target and that this may not be the best place for them to have access to kids. That’s the importance of rules and guidelines. It sets a tone.”

What are Ms. Bayar’s recommendations for a school dealing with a case of a very old allegation surfacing under the Child Victims Act?

“One of the most important things is transparency with the school community,” she said.

“When you’re talking a Child Victim Act case, you’re talking about something that will be in litigation for a period of time. You’re also talking about an alleged victim who has been willing to go on record identifying horribly detailed invasive pieces of things that happened to them. It’s important to recognize that kids do not disclose right away. Things come out decades later.

“There shouldn’t be anybody opining on the validity of the allegations in terms of it not having happened. If you are in a situation where you decide to conduct an investigation of a fact-finding nature, there should be no determination made without people who are specially trained and trauma-informed. Who they are should be public. There should be an opportunity for parents and students — the community — to bring forward to outside investigators any information that is concerning. The investigators should be speaking to the person who made the allegations. It all should be transparent. And the goal always needs to be protecting the kids.”

Ms. Bayar doesn’t think it is appropriate to keep someone on a school’s staff in the wake of such allegations.

“If you have an allegation that someone molested a child, it doesn’t matter where or when, would you bring that person into your home to hang out with your kid one on one?

“If you have someone who is under investigation for fraud and embezzlement, and you are an accounting firm, would you keep them working with clients, or say, for the time being, you need to step out: You have been accused of embezzling funds and our clients need to be protected. You’re not going to say, we’re still going to have you work with our clients but we’ll make sure you’re not the only one who has the passwords. You would wait to see what actually happens in that suit, and how it comes out in the end. Why don’t we apply that same standard to our kids?”

Can an investigation come back and say that the alleged molester is in fact kosher?

“How can an internal investigation do that if there is a pending lawsuit?” Ms. Bayar said. “There’s going to be a discovery stage. There will potentially be depositions. You would have to spend time interviewing the victim, vetting their discovery and information. You can’t opine on something being ‘kosher’ without speaking to the victim.

“More than that: We know that when it comes to sexual abuse, delayed disclosures means there will be pieces people may not remember, and information that might seem relevant or not. Wait to see what actually happens in that lawsuit, and how it comes out in the end.”

https://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/keeping-kids-safe/

Why Take The Booster? - Part Two

 

Israeli research shows 50-fold jump in antibodies after third shot

 

50 times more neutralizing antibodies were found in healthcare workers who received their booster shot eight months after their second.

An Israeli is seen receiving the third COVID-19 booster shot at a Clalit clinic in Jerusalem

 

A third dose of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine led to 50 times more neutralizing antibodies in healthcare workers who received the shot eight months after their second dose, a new study has shown.

 

The report, published recently in Lancet Microbe by Dr. Esther Saiag, deputy director for information and operations at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, and her colleague Dr. David Bomze, examined the effect of the third dose on 346 healthy hospital employees.

 

“Healthcare workers are very unique,” Saiag told The Jerusalem Post.

 

She said that these workers tend to be healthier and more active than average citizens, and that because of the role they have played in the pandemic, they were among the first to take the vaccines.

 

Most of these workers received their second shot eight months before their third shot. Israel started its vaccination campaign on December 20, and medical personnel were among the first group to be vaccinated.

 

When the country opened up third doses to elderly people in August, Saiag asked if any of the older staff would be screened to check their level of antibodies before getting the shot. Some 346 people between the ages of 64 and 73 (215 women) complied.

 

The test found that in August their median baseline level of antibodies was only 3.67.

 

While antibodies do not tell the whole immunity story, as cellular memory is also important, Saiag said this number was very low.

 

Those who were screened before the shot returned 10 days after their third dose to get tested again. Almost all of them (95.7%) had a surge in antibodies more than 150.

 

Anti-spike protein concentrations were established with the ADVIA Centaur SARS-CoV-2 IgG assay, which provides an index value up to 150, the Lancet article explained. An index equal to or greater than one is considered reactive.

 

“We saw that very soon after having enough of the population getting the third booster that the fourth wave subsided,” Saiag said. “Now we see what was happening behind the scenes. We have this surge in antibodies. Maybe we all expected to find this, but now we have the data to prove it.”

 

Only two subjects did not respond at all and the level of antibodies in their blood remained negative. Nine additional subjects responded with only a moderate increase in the level of antibodies, despite the booster dose.

 

A follow-up study is now planned to trace possible causes for lack of response or non-maximal response among these subjects.

 

This is the largest study of its kind to examine the effect of the booster dose among healthcare workers.

Saiag said the plans are to continue to follow this group and re-screen them at various intervals to see what happens with their antibody levels. They will also check in with the staff to see if any of them contract COVID and, if so, if they have symptomatic or asymptomatic cases.

 

The results could help governments, including the Israeli government, make decisions about whether a fourth dose is needed, she said.

 

https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/coronavirus/israeli-research-shows-50-fold-jump-in-antibodies-after-third-shot-682601?_ga=2.30408447.1116449043.1634580035-1969581575.1579377799&utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=We+are+in+a+5G+cold+war&utm_campaign=October+20%2C+2021+Night&vgo_ee=Jn367jKILnpErXAAhCpdDovy7T5YEJ8ohjC9vauJg30%3D

Why The Booster?

 

If the chickenpox vaccine lasts 20 years, why not the COVID-19 shot?

 

Will the third booster shot be our last? Israeli doctors explain the science behind it.

Health worker prepares a Covid-19 vaccine at a temporary Clalit health care center in Jerusalem

 

 

The measles vaccine lasts forever. The chickenpox vaccine is good for as long as 20 years. The DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis) requires five doses before the age of seven, but then it offers protection for at least 10 years.

 

So why do we assume that we will have to get a shot of the coronavirus vaccine every six months or year?

 

There are reasons why individuals might need a COVID booster at least every year, but also some reasons why the third shot may, in fact, be our last.

 

The first reason we might need a fourth (or fifth or sixth) shot is because of the decay of our own antibodies and immune response, explained Dr. Oren Kobiler of Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine.

 

Recent studies have shown that the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine wanes after four to six months, making individuals more prone to infection. A booster dose does exactly what its name implies: It boosts our antibodies, offering greater protection against the virus.

 

Another reason we might need repeated shots is due to variants, or what is known in scientific terms as “antigenic drift.” If the virus is always changing, then our vaccines will need to be updated to protect against the latest threat.

 

Some viruses, such as polio, measles and mumps, do not change a lot, hence the vaccines continue to be effective. In contrast, influenza changes every year, so people receive a new flu vaccine to protect against it.

 

“The vaccine is the protection,” said Prof. Meital Gal Tanamy, head of the Molecular Virology Lab at Bar-Ilan University’s Faculty of Medicine. “The period of protection is dependent on the vaccine and the virus.”

 

“A variant is a virus that contains mutations, and if it has evolutionary advantages, it can take over in the population,” she said, adding that this is what happened with the Delta variant. “The other question is how effective against these variants the vaccines we have will be.”

 

Coronavirus is an RNA virus, which means it changes. However, its mutation rate is three to four times less compared with the influenza virus, which is good news for vaccine makers, Gal Tanamy said.

Another thing to consider is how good the immune response really is that is induced by the vaccine.

 

(Novel AY4.2 COVD Delta variant identified in 11-year-old Israeli)

The "Delta Plus" strand has been on the rise in the UK, with British authorities reporting 6% of the positive cases on Tuesday belonging to the AY4.2 strand, according to a Maariv report.

 https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/novel-ay42-covd-delta-variant-identified-in-11-year-old-israeli-682503?_ga=2.33030014.1116449043.1634580035-1969581575.1579377799&utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Novel+AY4+2+COVD+Delta+variant+identified+in+11-year-old+Israeli&utm_campaign=October+19%2C+2021+Night&vgo_ee=Jn367jKILnpErXAAhCpdDovy7T5YEJ8ohjC9vauJg30%3D)

 

 

 

“If the purpose of a vaccine is to prevent infection, then it needs to lead to the creation of a good memory cell response – B cells and T cells that are cells induced by the vaccine but that stay in our body,” Gal Tanamy said. “If a person becomes infected, these cells are activated and can create a fast and good response against the pathogen, which is why we do not get sick if we are vaccinated.”

 

The question then is whether or not we get a good memory response with the vaccines that we have.

Recent papers have shown that even as neutralizing antibodies wane, the vaccine still has a good memory response.

 

So, why take the booster then?

 

Because, Kobiler said, the booster is not only stopping serious disease, it is also aimed at halting infection – a high bar for a vaccine.

 

“Most vaccines are used to prevent serious infection and not any infection,” he said. “Here we are asking the vaccine to prevent any and all disease, to prevent the infection from spreading.

 

“Most people in the world don’t need the booster shot to prevent them from getting serious disease, but they do need it to prevent them from getting corona and spreading it to other people.”

 

Gal Tanamy stressed that even people with two shots are “still very much protected from severe disease” because of their memory cells.

 

But there are also reasons to believe that this third shot could be the last.

 

Many childhood vaccines are taken three times and no more, such as the polio vaccine and the HPV vaccine against the papilloma virus. The latter, for example, if taken after the age of 15, needs three doses, one month and six months after the first dose, and then it lasts a lifetime, as far as scientists currently know.

 

Another idea is that the administration regime could be altered to make the vaccines more effective.

Several recent papers suggest, for example, that the Pfizer vaccine creates a more robust immunity if the first and second shots are given eight or even 12 weeks apart instead of three, Kobiler said.

 

“Now, with the third dose being given at six months [after the second dose], I am not sure we will ever need another booster,” he said.

 

There are also scientists who believe that like previous coronaviruses, the pandemic will eventually become endemic and less severe, and the need to vaccinate will soon become unnecessary, Kobiler added.

 

“I am more inclined to that point of view because of what we know of other coronaviruses,” he said. 

 

“Usually, they are caught at a young age and cause very mild disease. And those that are exposed to them at a young age tend not to suffer from severe disease when they are older.”

 

Finally, each booster sparks a better immune response, both in terms of quantity and quality of antibodies than the one before, Gal Tanamy said. The immune response becomes “more specific” and the antibodies “more efficient,” she said.

 

So, will we or won’t we need to vaccinate against COVID for life?

 

“Only time will tell,” Kobiler said.

 

https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/coronavirus/if-the-chickenpox-vaccine-lasts-20-years-why-not-the-covid-19-shot-682382

Berland fled Israel in 2013 amid allegations that he had sexually assaulted several female followers. After evading arrest for three years and slipping through various countries, Berland returned to Israel and was sentenced to 18 months in prison in November 2016, on two counts of indecent acts and one case of assault...

 

WE JUST MAY HAVE TO KILL YOU!

Police said probing if sex offender rabbi personally linked to cold case murders

 

Three suspects said to be members of the Shuvu Bonim sect and their "Modesty Squad", headed by convicted sex offender Rabbi Eliezer Berland, were arrested Sunday for crimes committed in the 80s and 90s

One of the men arrested on suspicion of murdering Avraham Edri and Nissim Shitrit is brought for a court hearing outside the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court on October 17, 2021

 

Police are probing whether convicted sex offender Rabbi Eliezer Berland, head of the extremist Shuvu Bonim sect, was personally involved in a pair of unsolved murders in the 1980s and 1990s, the Kan public broadcaster reported Sunday.

Police arrested three suspects — who are reportedly from Shuvu Bonim — earlier in the day in connection to the killings. On Sunday afternoon, a court ordered all three suspects remanded into custody for an additional eight days.

Police announced the arrest of the three individuals — two men and one woman — over their alleged connection to a murder in 1990 and a kidnapping and suspected murder in 1986. Police said Sunday that the individuals were arrested and questioned over allegations of kidnapping, murder, and conspiracy to commit a crime. Most details of the investigation are under a gag order that is in place until the end of the year.

Police told the court that they need to continue carrying out the investigation and following up on dozens of leads, and they are concerned that releasing the suspects could interfere in their efforts.

According to Hebrew media reports, the suspects were arrested in connection to the disappearance of 17-year-old Nissim Shitrit, who was allegedly beaten by the sect’s “religious police” four months before he was last seen in January 1986.

In a documentary released by Kan in 2020, one of Berland’s former disciples said that the religious police murdered the boy, dismembered him and buried his body parts in the Eshtaol Forest near Beit Shemesh. His remains were never found and the case was never solved.

A woman suspected of being linked to the murders of Avraham Edri and Nissim Shitrit is brought to a court hearing at the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court on October 17, 2021

 

Kan reported Sunday evening that police had not made any progress toward locating Shitrit’s body.

The second murder reportedly connected to the arrested suspects was of 41-year-old Avi Edri in 1990, who was found beaten to death in the Ramot Forest in the north of Jerusalem. In the Kan documentary, Edri’s murder was tied to Shuvu Bonim by former disciples. It too has remained unsolved for over 30 years.

An attorney for the female suspect told the court that her client was a victim of the extremist sect, and is cooperating with police in order to see justice done. According to the attorney, the woman was forced by members of the sect to lure one of the victims to a specific location.

The cult-like Shuvu Bonim offshoot of the Bratslav Hasidic sect commanded by Berland has had repeated run-ins with the law, including attacking witnesses.

 

Rabbi Eliezer Berland arrives for a hearing at the Jerusalem District court on February 28, 2020. 

 

Berland fled Israel in 2013 amid allegations that he had sexually assaulted several female followers. After evading arrest for three years and slipping through various countries, Berland returned to Israel and was sentenced to 18 months in prison in November 2016, on two counts of indecent acts and one case of assault, as part of a plea deal that included seven months of time served. He was freed just five months later, in part due to his ill health.

Berland was arrested for fraud in February 2020, after hundreds of people filed police complaints saying that he had sold prayers and pills to desperate members of his community, promised families of individuals with disabilities that their loved ones would be able to walk, and told families of convicted felons that their relatives would be freed from prison.

Last May, he was further charged with tax evasion, violations of money laundering laws, and other offenses for failing to report and concealing income generated through his activities with Shuvu Bonim.

Berland is set to return to prison this month after being convicted of fraud in a plea deal in June that saw him sentenced to 18 months in prison. But the sentence will include time already served, as Berland spent a year in jail before being released to house arrest in February of this year.

 

https://www.timesofisrael.com/police-said-probing-if-sex-offender-rabbi-personally-linked-to-cold-case-murders/?utm_source=The+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=daily-edition-2021-10-18&utm_medium=email

1 in 3 Haredim caught coronavirus, double the national average – study (On The Unfortunate Death of Colin Powell - Keep the anti-vaxxers in their holes - Colin Powell had multiple myeloma, a cancer of plasma cells that suppresses the body's immune response, and Parkinson's Disease. Even if fully vaccinated against Covid-19, those who are immunocompromised are at greater risk from the virus.)

 

31% of community have been confirmed positive compared to 13.7% of other Israelis; think tank says behavior in Haredi society to blame, others question conclusion

An ultra-Orthodox man has his son tested for COVID-19 in in Lod, on October 17, 2021

 

Almost one in three ultra-Orthodox Israelis has been infected with the coronavirus, more than double the national average, according to a new study.

The Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel, a nonpartisan think tank, crunched Health Ministry statistics, and found that from the start of the pandemic until September 2021, 13.7 percent of the Israeli population has been confirmed COVID positive.

The figure for the Haredi community, based on figures for the main population centers where Haredim are a majority, is 31%.

The figure comes despite strong take-up of vaccines among Haredim in recent months, and points to a “failure to control behavior” to fight the virus in Haredi areas, according to Alex Weinreb, research director at the Taub Center.

This is shocking,” he told The Times of Israel. “It’s testament to a very different approach to mitigating and minimizing the spread of the virus compared to that in the rest of Israel.”

The Taub study addressed the question, much discussed throughout the pandemic, of whether Haredim have high infection levels because of lax adherence to virus regulations in parts of the community or because of circumstances, such as high population density and propensity for poverty.

 

Police officers clash with Haredi men during a protest against the enforcement of coronavirus restrictions in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Mea Shearim, October 4, 2020

There was major controversy in Israel during much of the pandemic over conduct in some Haredi areas, where virus restrictions were widely flouted. A year ago there were even some Haredi demonstrations against restrictions.

Weinreb said his study clearly shows that behavior is to blame rather than circumstances. But some other scholars reject this conclusion and say the question is still an open one.

Weinreb made calculations that controlled for the effect of factors like density ad economic deprivation, based on observations of how they impact figures in non-Haredi areas. He concluded that those factors are only responsible for a small part of the margin between Haredim and the general population.

Weinreb said that even after he had controlled for these factors, he found that Haredim have faced double the risk of infection compared to Israel as a whole.

“This points to the notion that there is something in the behavioral realm that explains infection levels, not population density and factors like that,” he argued.

COVID stats expert Eran Segal, a computational biologist from the Weizmann Institute of Science, said that the analysis isn’t strong enough to point a finger at Haredi behavior rather than circumstances.

“I can’t verify that [conclusion],” he told The Times of Israel, noting that Haredi society has a high proportion of under-12s, who are not eligible for vaccines, and under-16s, who only became eligible in the summer.

“And there are also big families in the Haredim, so more interactions in households, so it’s not necessarily behavior,” he said.

 

https://www.timesofisrael.com/1-in-3-haredim-caught-coronavirus-double-the-national-average-study/?utm_source=The+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=daily-edition-2021-10-18&utm_medium=email

Beyond The Grave.... "I'm sure some people think Kolko evaded a full measure of justice, but I can tell you this: his epitaph has not been written, and it's going to be written by his victims. How he will be remembered is going to be determined by his victims."

 

• 

   

  https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/fbem/DocumentDisplayServlet?documentId=v6H9s8BftohIgekS8TnHNw==&system=prod
  

   

  Attorney for YTT victim Boruch Sandhaus warns the Kolkos he will have an estate representative appointed with the Court's approval if they don't appoint someone themselves

   

  https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/fbem/DocumentDisplayServlet?documentId=Mkx8c7kmS1RpJbz2kmi1Ew==&system=prod

   

  He gave the Kolkos until Feb. to appoint someone.

   

  on Feb. 3rd, Chief Clerk Quinn of the Kings County Surrogate's Court notified the attorney that no action had yet been taken on the Kolko estate

   

  https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/fbem/DocumentDisplayServlet?documentId=YiiMXSs6wSevZr29RlNV7w==&system=prod

   

  "I heard he was sick. He was on a ventilator," said Avi Moskowitz, a lawyer for a Brooklyn school where Kolko worked with children, Yeshiva Torah Temimah on Ocean Parkway.

   

  In 2016, Torah Temimah agreed to pay an unprecedented $2.1 million to 2 former students who charged that Kolko sexually assaulted them.

   

  Moskowitz, who does not represent Kolko, is now defending Torah Temimah against 3 other pending lawsuits by men who claim the rabbi molested them as kids - and that the yeshiva knew of the abuse.

   

  Kolko's death complicates the cases, Moskowitz said. "You have grown men who claim that 40 or 50 years ago something happened, and now the person alleged to have done it is not available."

   

  But Niall MacGiollabhui, a Manhattan lawyer who represents plaintiff David Framowitz, said, "It won't affect the case. At the end of the day, there's little denying Kolko did what he did."

   

  He added, "I'm sure some people think Kolko evaded a full measure of justice, but I can tell you this: his epitaph has not been written, and it's going to be written by his victims. How he will be remembered is going to be determined by his victims."

  • 
    

  ---

UNBREATHABLE --- If You Go Fress, Buy a new Dress, Bring an Oxygen Tank, & Whatever You've Got In The Bank. When You Die, They Will Lie, They'll Say Because You Got Vaxxed, When Kotler, Wachtfogel, Kamenetzky's Daas Toirah Was Aghast!

פֿאַר אַ ביסל טשאָלענט און פיל פון בולשיט Trials and travails are a reality of Galus. Over the past 18 months, Klal Yisroel and Reb Yisroel have faced challenges and through it all we survived and we thrived. COVID-19, loss of our gedolim, shuls shuttered, families suffering through illness and tragedy, schools closed, challenges to the chinuch and self esteem of our children, financial woes, Meron, Stolin, Surfside… we faced an unending stream of tests. Time and time again, we emerge from the kur habarzel stronger and clearly unbreakable.  Join us as we celebrate our accomplishments and growth, and let us reflect on what makes it all possible.   From where do we get this strength, how can we become stronger, and how can we pass it on to the next generation? Join us at The Agudah Convention as Gedolei Yisroel guide us along our unbreakable path. THE 2021 AGUDAH CONVENTION

COVID-19 was the No. 1 killer of Americans age 35 to 54 last month, and No. 2 overall

COVID-19 was the No. 1 leading cause of death in the U.S. in January, at the peak of last winter's brutal coronavirus surge, but then vaccines became widely available and it dropped to No. 7 by July, the Kaiser Family Foundation says in a new analysis of COVID-19 fatalities. 

Then the Delta variant hit and found ample unvaccinated Americans to kick COVID-19 back up to the No. 2 killer in August and September, the leading cause of death for Americans age 35 to 54, and even the sixth or seventh leading cause of death for children. 

Kaiser Family Foundation

 

Most elementary-aged ultra-Orthodox boys study in school networks which do not teach core curriculum subjects such as math, science, computers or English, while the overwhelming majority of ultra-Orthodox boys do not study these subjects at high-school age frameworks.

Bill anchoring state haredi school system to be advanced

 

The majority of boys in the state haredi school system do not study subjects that increase entry of ultra-Orthodox men into the workforce.

Chairwoman of the Knesset Education Committee MK Sharren Haskel (New Hope) announced on Monday that a law anchoring the state ultra-Orthodox school system, which teaches core curriculum subjects, will be advanced during the current Knesset.

 

The legislation, which she said would be a government bill, would be developed in a new sub-committee dealing exclusively with the state’s ultra-Orthodox school network.

 

Passage of such legislation is crucial to the further development of the fledgling school system which is severely hampered both by the fact that it is not an official state school network and at the same time faces severe opposition by the ultra-Orthodox political parties.

 

Most elementary-aged ultra-Orthodox boys study in school networks which do not teach core curriculum subjects such as math, science, computers or English, while the overwhelming majority of ultra-Orthodox boys do not study these subjects at high-school age frameworks.

 

This creates severe difficulties for ultra-Orthodox men when they seek to obtain higher education qualifications and when trying to enter the workforce, which analysts, including the Bank of Israel, have said will create severe difficulties for the Israeli economy in coming decades due to the rapidly growing size of the haredi community.

 

 

 The Education Committee discusses education in Haredi schools

 

Haskel said during a committee hearing on Monday that the legislation would be prepared together with the ultra-Orthodox Department of the Education Ministry, the Finance Ministry and haredi community leaders on the issue “to find the right framework to allow the ultra-Orthodox to fulfil their potential in whatever manner they should choose.”

 

She said the current government “has the opportunity to make the necessary changes which even ultra-Orthodox representatives are interested in but are unable to do.”

 

The state ultra-Orthodox school system was established during the 2013-15 government, but not through legislation or even administrative orders from the Education Ministry, creating significant difficulties in establishing and funding such schools.

 

In addition, local municipal authorities must give their authorization for such schools to be opened due to their lack of national and legislative standing, which has meant that such schools have not been opened in ultra-Orthodox stronghold cities such as Bnei Brak because the rabbinic and political leadership of the community is opposed to such schools, partly on ideological grounds and partly because they could draw pupils, and funding, away from the traditional ultra-Orthodox school networks.

 

The committee received official statistics from the Education Ministry revealing that there are currently 490,000 pupils in all ultra-Orthodox schools in some 7,000 different institutions.

 

Of those, 257,000 are in elementary school systems, with just 8,496 in the state ultra-Orthodox system.

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/bill-anchoring-state-haredi-school-system-to-be-advanced-681675?_ga=2.212348246.376459883.1633854823-1229034299.1617710680&utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Nobel+Prize+winner+Angrist+left+Israel+because+of+his+low+salary&utm_campaign=October+11%2C+2021+Night&vgo_ee=Jn367jKILnpErXAAhCpdDovy7T5YEJ8ohjC9vauJg30%3D

If The "Woman" Is Counted As A Man For A Minyan, She/He Should Not Be Sitting In The Women's Section of The Shul...

 

Trans woman helps a UK "Orthodox" synagogue complete a minyan - Sit Her/Him With The Guys, Don't Hide Her In The Women's Section, He Is Not A She !

 

A woman agreed to be the 10th male in a synagogue minyan after the rabbi ruled it acceptable as she was born a man. Would you want your wife and daughter sitting in the "not sure what this is" section?

Princes Road synagogue in Liverpool, United Kingdom

 

A transgender woman in the United Kingdom recently helped an Orthodox synagogue in Liverpool complete a minyan despite not being a man by gender.

The Princes Road synagogue asked the woman to complete the prayer quorum on the first day of the Sukkot holiday, September 21, the Jewish News reported, in turn citing The Jewish Telegraph. 

According to Jewish law, 10 men are the minimum needed to hold a prayer service.

“According to Jewish law, she can be counted in a minyan and we were one person short,” said the synagogue’s Rabbi Yigal Wachmann. “We took into account her sensitivities. I asked her permission so as not to offend her. She was fine with it.”

The newspaper said she sat in the synagogue’s ladies section for the entirety of the service and quoted Dayan Gavriel Krausz, former head of the Manchester Beth Din, who said she could be included in an all-male minyan provided she adheres to the tenets of the religion. However, he is quoted as stating: “A man cannot become a woman just by an operation. If you are born a man, you are a man.”

Krausz also called cross-dressing “despicable” and added that “he” could be included, but “should not get an aliya (a invitation to stand at the bimah, the holiest place in the synagogue where the Torah is kept).”

“It’s always good to see Jewish communities such as Princes Road welcoming and including their trans members,” said Dalia Fleming, Executive Director of Keshet UK, which supports LGBT+ Jews

“There’s no one model that works for every community or Jewish trans person, and many communities are just starting to work this through. In the meanwhile, Keshet UK really wants to see these conversations are reported sensitively and kindly, to avoid causing hurt to LGBT+ people, and to give communities and their LGBT+ members time and space to create an authentic approach that works for them.”

https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/transgender-woman-makes-up-a-minyan-at-orthodox-synagogue/

https://www.timesofisrael.com/trans-woman-helps-a-uk-synagogue-complete-minyan/?utm_source=The+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=daily-edition-2021-10-10&utm_medium=email

A young woman who claims she was sexually abused by Hirschel Pekkar, a "prominent" member of New York’s Hasidic Jewish community three decades ago is going after his greatest legacy: a massive brass menorah in the heart of Brooklyn.

 

Woman Wants to Melt Down Her Alleged Abuser’s Famous Menorah

 

 

 

BEYOND THE GRAVE - HIRSHEL'S VERY DEAD PEKKAR

She’s suing the estate of the silversmith she says molested her as a child—and wants his greatest legacy.

A young woman who claims she was sexually abused by a prominent member of New York’s Hasidic Jewish community three decades ago is going after his greatest legacy: a massive brass menorah in the heart of Brooklyn.

The plaintiff, a 36-year-old woman now living in Israel, claims celebrated silversmith Hirschel Pekkar sexually assaulted her more than a dozen times in the 1990s, starting when she was 5 years old. Pekkar died this July, but his menorah—which the lawsuit describes as “one of the most important pieces of Jewish artwork of the 20th century”—lives on, displayed every winter outside the world headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch Jewish movement.

The plaintiff hopes to get possession of the 6-foot-tall menorah, her lawyer told The Daily Beast, and melt it to the ground.

“Our client has been revictimized every year, watching it light up globally knowing what happened to her,” attorney Susan Crumiller said. “The menorah has become a real symbol to our client, and to us, of justice in this case.”

Asked about the allegations in the lawsuit, Pekkar’s son, Moshe Pekkar, who is also a silversmith, said he had not seen the court papers but was “not aware of anything like that.” He did not respond to further requests for comment. A spokesman for the Chabad Lubavitch said his “heart goes out to this woman,” but that the movement was not party to the suit and thus would not be commenting further.

The Chabad-Lubatvich movement is one of the largest and best-known Hasidic Jewish communities in the world. Founded in Russia in 1775, its world headquarters moved to Brooklyn during World War II; today, the community in Crown Heights alone is said to number between 10,000 and 16,000. One of its most prominent outreach strategies is the lighting of some 15,000 public menorahs around the world to raise awareness for Hanukkah.

In 1982, followers of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson—the most recent leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, also called the rebbe—commissioned Pekkar to create a giant menorah in the image of what the rebbe believed a traditional menorah would have looked like. The resulting piece was displayed outside the Chabad-Lubavitch world headquarters, and quickly became a prized symbol for the community worldwide. (A “Jewish Hasidic Chabad Lubavitch Rebbe 770 Menorah Sweatshirt” is currently available on Amazon.)

The plaintiff claims she met Pekkar a decade after he created the famous menorah, when her father began working with him at the jewelry-making studio adjacent to his Crown Heights apartment. The plaintiff and her family were not members of the local Chabad synagogue, she said, but visited often to meet with the rebbe, who they considered a spiritual leader. She grew up visiting the menorah every Hanukkah, she said, and idolizing the man who made it.

The abuse she allegedly suffered, she said, was like “Santa Claus doing something bad.”

“Everything with Santa is so cute,” she said. “Everything with [Pekkar] is so holy.”

One day in 1991, while visiting her father at the jewelry studio, the plaintiff asked to use the restroom. Because there was no bathroom in the studio, the suit claims, Pekkar volunteered to bring the plaintiff to the bathroom in his apartment. He led her to the bathroom, the suit claims, but stopped outside, sat down on a stool, and began to touch the plaintiff’s vagina under her clothes.

Because the 5-year-old was “completely unaware what was happening or how she should respond,” the suit claims, and because she “trusted Pekkar as a friend of the family, and a notable figure in her community,” she stood frozen and silent while he abused her. Afterward, he allegedly engaged her in friendly conversation to make her feel comfortable with what had happened, but also warned her never to tell anyone. It was the first of at least a dozen such instances, the suit claims.

The plaintiff claims that when her parents learned of the abuse, they brought her allegations to the local rabbinical court, located right next to the Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters. What the plaintiff says is the tribunal’s August 1993 decision, which was reviewed by The Daily Beast, states that Pekkar “admitted that he has committed an offense,” but sentences him only to “treatment” and the observation of a specialist. (The decision was reached by three rabbis, one of whom is dead; the other two could not be reached for comment.)

A month later, the lawsuit claims, Pekkar sent a letter to the plaintiff’s father threatening to tarnish his name if he ever raised the allegations again. Fearing retribution from Pekkar and worried that her reputation would be tarnished, the plaintiff said, her parents buried what had happened to her for years.

The plaintiff moved to Israel at age 8 to live with family, but continued to suffer from “pervasive and fragmented memories and dreams about Pekkar,” according to the suit. At home in New York on summer breaks, she tried cold-calling people named Pekkar out of the phone book, pretending to be a police officer. Finally, at age 18, the suit says, she discovered a copy of the tribunal's verdict in her father’s files, confronted him about it, and demanded to confront Pekkar.

According to the suit, Pekkar did not deny the abuse when the plaintiff approached him about it, but claimed she had “wanted” it. It claims he even gave her a tour of his house, pointing out the areas where he abused her. More than a decade later, when she was 30, the plaintiff tried again to confront Pekkar. This time, the suit claims, he threatened to take legal action against her.

“I just let it go,” the plaintiff said. “Talking to him was always really hard, so I just tried to forget about it and go on with my life, understanding that no one is going to listen anyway.”

Then, last year, she heard about the Child Victims Act—a 2019 New York law that allows victims of child sexual abuse a chance to file their claims that would otherwise be outside the stuate of limitations. It had been years since they last spoke, but, “when I heard I could sue [Pekkar], I actually called his house,” the plaintiff said. “I asked for him and they said one second and I hung up. I just needed to know he was alive.”

It took time to find a lawyer who would take her case, and more to compile a complaint from a more than 30-year-old incident. The plaintiff was finally prepared to file the lawsuit this summer when she got the news she had been dreading most of her life: Pekkar was dead.

“When he died it was just an absolute shock, to her especially,” Crumiller recalled. “Now [was] like, ‘We have to figure out how to sue a dead person.’”

Doing so required a novel legal strategy, which involved requesting a lien on the menorah and demanding an administrator be put in charge of Pekkar’s estate. The ownership of the menorah itself is still unclear, as is who will be appointed to take over the Pekkar estate. But Crumiller said she is hopeful it will result in her client seeing justice, after 30 years of being denied it.

The plaintiff knows the lawsuit will likely be unpopular in the Chabad community. (“[It’s] kind of telling a person that that piece of art you’ve been looking at for 40 years might just not be as holy as you think it is,” she said.) But she said she doesn’t resent the Chabad movement; in fact, she’s grown closer to it in recent years, drawn to the beauty and spirituality of its fundamental texts.

She also still feels love for Schneerson, who died in 1994. In a strange way, she said, she is doing this to help him.

“For a whole decade he was lighting [the menorah] and loving it, and he was loving something that wasn’t holy,” she said. “He touched a lie. And if he knew, maybe he wouldn't touch it.”

But she is also, she said, doing this to help other people who endured abuse and are too afraid to speak up about it.

“No one talks about it, so you think it’s a big secret you have to not talk about and keep to yourself,” she said. “You don't even think about other people being hurt, but maybe they did.”

She added: “I think once you're strong enough and able to take care of other people, you should.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/abuse-accuser-sues-estate-of-lubavitch-silversmith-hirschel-pekkar-seeks-his-famous-menorah

 

“I’m compelled at funerals to shake hands with the dusty men who dig our graves”

 

 By Robert Kolker

There is a sunny earnestness to Dawn Dorland, an un-self-conscious openness that endears her to some people and that others have found to be a little extra. Her friends call her a “feeler”: openhearted and eager, pressing to make connections with others even as, in many instances, she feels like an outsider. An essayist and aspiring novelist who has taught writing classes in Los Angeles, she is the sort of writer who, in one authorial mission statement, declares her faith in the power of fiction to “share truth,” to heal trauma, to build bridges. (“I’m compelled at funerals to shake hands with the dusty men who dig our graves,” she has written.) She is known for signing off her emails not with “All best” or “Sincerely,” but “Kindly.”

On June 24, 2015, a year after completing her M.F.A. in creative writing, Dorland did perhaps the kindest, most consequential thing she might ever do in her life. She donated one of her kidneys, and elected to do it in a slightly unusual and particularly altruistic way. As a so-called nondirected donation, her kidney was not meant for anyone in particular but instead was part of a donation chain, coordinated by surgeons to provide a kidney to a recipient who may otherwise have no other living donor. There was some risk with the procedure, of course, and a recovery to think about, and a one-kidney life to lead from that point forward. But in truth, Dorland, in her 30s at the time, had been wanting to do it for years. “As soon as I learned I could,” she told me recently, on the phone from her home in Los Angeles, where she and her husband were caring for their toddler son and elderly pit bull (and, in their spare time, volunteering at dog shelters and searching for adoptive families for feral cat litters). “It’s kind of like not overthinking love, you know?”

 The procedure went well. By a stroke of luck, Dorland would even get to meet the recipient, an Orthodox Jewish man, and take photos with him and his family. In time, Dorland would start posting outside the private group to all of Facebook, celebrating her one-year “kidneyversary” and appearing as a UCLA Health Laker for a Day at the Staples Center to support live-organ donation. But just after the surgery, when she checked Facebook, Dorland noticed some people she’d invited into the group hadn’t seemed to react to any of her posts. On July 20, she wrote an email to one of them: a writer named Sonya Larson. 

Personally, my childhood was marked by trauma and abuse; I didn’t have the opportunity to form secure attachments with my family of origin. A positive outcome of my early life is empathy, that it opened a well of possibility between me and strangers. While perhaps many more people would be motivated to donate an organ to a friend or family member in need, to me, the suffering of strangers is just as real. … Throughout my preparation for becoming a donor … I focused a majority of my mental energy on imagining and celebrating you.

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE:  By Robert Kolker of New York Magazine Pulitzer Prize Fame  "On The Rabbi's Knee"

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/05/magazine/dorland-v-larson.html?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits