#MI11 - this libelous claim, immediately disproved, has never been retracted. How many innocent Jews were targeted because of Andy Levin’s careless, lying words? https://t.co/2lnt86ReaE
— AdinaZ 🇺🇸🇮🇱🤌🏼 (@lackboys3) January 7, 2022
“I don’t speak because I have the power to speak; I speak because I don’t have the power to remain silent.” Rav Kook z"l
#MI11 - this libelous claim, immediately disproved, has never been retracted. How many innocent Jews were targeted because of Andy Levin’s careless, lying words? https://t.co/2lnt86ReaE
— AdinaZ 🇺🇸🇮🇱🤌🏼 (@lackboys3) January 7, 2022
Today, self care means emailing an esteemed rabbi and demanding that he stand by his words pic.twitter.com/8xS71gsYOU
— Dr. Hannah Lebovits (@HannahLebovits) January 6, 2022
" I don't really have the words this morning to describe what is happening.
מלך המשיח לעולם ועד pic.twitter.com/y0rOkdNKZl
— Hasidic_3 (@Hasidic_3) January 7, 2022
The BBC has demanded that the victims of an antisemitic attack on a bus carrying Jewish teenagers reveal their identities before it responds to a complaint about its coverage of the incident, the Jewish Chronicle reported.
Video footage from the incident, which occurred during the Hanukkah holiday, shows the young men yelling antisemitic abuse and threats at the open-top bus, while also attempting to smash its windows and spitting at it. and others made Nazi salutes.
Some of them also took off a shoe and hit the bus with it, which is an insult in Arab culture, as the bottom of the shoe is considered unclean.
The Chaim Walder saga that has unfolded over the past weeks has created upheaval across the Jewish world, as it must. Walder was one of those profoundly sick people who built trust in order to exploit it in manipulative and destructive ways, shattering an entire community’s sense of trust.
There has been a flood of responses to this tragedy. Some of those responses demonstrate a severe lack of understanding of sexual abuse, highlighting the work that remains to be done on abuse prevention, discovery of victims, and response to perpetrators. And many voices have spoken clearly to the issue, bringing to the fore the growing number of individuals who can be turned to and organizations that are doing real work in this critical area.
The engineer trying to stabilize the Millennium Tower, a luxury residential skyscraper in San Francisco that is sinking into the ground and now leaning over two feet off of center, said the building is now tilting three inches per year.
Structural engineer Ronald O. Hamburger made the comments Thursday at a city hearing in which he pitched an updated fix for the building's foundation, NBC Bay Area reported.
The 58-story, 645-foot tall tower — opened to residents in 2009 — is now tilting 26 inches north and west at Fremont and Mission Streets in the heart of San Francisco’s financial district, the NBC News affiliate reported.
On Friday morning, most of the people bustling through Beit Shemesh, a town in central Israel with a large haredi Orthodox population, were getting ready for Shabbat. Shoshanna Keats-Jaskoll had a different mission.
Keats-Jaskoll was handing out flyers with messages of support for victims of sexual abuse, in a public display of solidarity at the end of a wrenching week in many Orthodox communities.
At the beginning of the week, Chaim Walder, a celebrated haredi Orthodox children’s book author in Israel, died by suicide after being accused by numerous children and young women of sexual abuse. The Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel visited Walder’s family. Then, on Thursday, one of Walder’s alleged victims, Shifra Horovitz, also died by suicide, her friends saying she had been distraught by the response to his death.
For Keats-Jaskoll, a cofounder of the Israeli advocacy organization Chochmat Nashim, which fights extremism and sexism in the Orthodox community, and for many other Orthodox women, the litany called for a coordinated, public response. So she, who is Orthodox but not haredi, and a network of haredi activists and volunteers printed 350,000 flyers and passed them out in haredi areas before Shabbat.
Rabbi Moshe Meiselman, the Rosh Yeshiva of Toras Moshe in Yerushalayim, spoke at length about the Chaim Walder case. His comments were nothing short of explosive.
The Rosh Yeshiva said that Walder was a “rasha merusha, absolutely without question.” He added that in addition to his years of abusing people, the fact that he took his own life renders him a murderer.
He said that over fifteen years ago, Rav Moshe Mordechai Shulzinger of Bnei Brak said that Walder was chashud of transgressing all aveiros in the Torah, including the three severe sins of murder, inappropriate relations, and idolatry.
He said that when Walder once requested a meeting with Rav Shmuel Auerbach zt”l, he was not allowed in, because the Rav felt that Walder was a rasha who would twist his words around. Some said it was well-known in Bnei Brak circles that Walder was guilty of the now infamous allegations.
The Rosh Yeshiva spoke sharply against the claim that Bais Din did not have the right to embarrass Walder in public, or that they were guilty of lashon hara.
He said that a respected Bais Din heard testimony from 22 people, and the Rambam says that if there are continuous rumors that someone is evil, first you need to confirm there is a basis for the claims, and then you can embarrass and humiliate him. You can say to his mother, “Look at this disgusting person you gave birth to.”
The Rosh Yeshiva said, “What about his mother’s feelings? Too bad. This person is dangerous.”
He added that the Rambam clearly does not require two witnesses in such a scenario, contrary to the rhetoric of some skeptics in the aftermath of this story.
He also observed that when some people suggested Walder’s suicide was justifiable, that led one victim who was trauamatzed by Walder’s defenders to tragically take her own life, because it was implied by some that the suicide was justifiable.
The Rosh Yeshiva said that If someone is falsely accused of something, the normal response would be to defend himself, not commit suicide.
Rav Meiselman said, “A certain Rosh Yeshiva in Bnei Brak repeated some of the stupidity, and a group of bochurim responded, ‘What about the victims? You don’t know the facts.’”
Rav Meiselman continued with harsh words: “So shut up if you don’t know [the facts].”
He said that his son did not allow Walder’s books into his house for years, because he felt they were not the proper hashkafa. For example, in 15 children’s books, he does not mention the Ribbono Shel Olam once, which is highly suspicious.
Rav Meiselman added that he knows a therapist who never took a female patient, because he would need to develop an emotional connection which is inappropriate. In addition, the therapist-patient relationship gives the therapist too much power over the patient.
He said that Walder did not learn in yeshiva very long and was not successful there, plus he went to the army, which elite bochurim don’t do. Yet he was a genius at manipulating public opinion as well as creating a false image of himself. He did not have a therapy license, and took advantage of naive people. To protect himself, Walder became the head of the organization in Bnei Brak in charge of evaluating abuse threats.
Addressing the question of whether one should read Walder’s books, the Rosh Yeshiva said, “To use an extreme example, if Adolf Hitler had written good children’s books, you would be disgusted.”
He closed his remarks by saying that this behavior comes from rampant exposure to pritzus. We are so exposed to pritzus everywhere, it keeps inching us closer to aveiros and gets worse and worse. When we have devices, you have to be the tzaddik hador not to be nichshal, and even the tzaddik hador needs to have syugim to protect himself.
Under orders from President Biden, the IRS is cracking down on payments Americans receive through third-party apps and is now requiring Venmo, PayPal, and Cash App to report transactions if they exceed $600 in a single year.
The new rules are intended to allow the federal government to snoop on small businesses and ensure that they are paying every penny of their required tax payments.
While businesses were always required to self-report such income to the IRS, many don’t keep records of small transactions, thus giving the IRS room to say that they need to step in.
Payment apps were previously required to send users 1099-K forms if their gross income was either more than $20,000 or if they had more than 200 transactions in one year.
Republicans have sharply criticized the new rules, saying that the last people who need to have the government’s noose tightened further around their necks are those that are already struggling to keep their businesses afloat.
Roshei Yeshiva, should be regarded as a chavas daas.
There needs to be clarity on the part of mechanchim/os that the entire chain of events
regarding Chaim Walder – from the perpetrations of aggravated abuse to the
unconscionable manner in which the episode terminated – is a horrific saga of chilul
Hashem. It should further be clear that the so-called “allegations” committed by the
perpetrator have been determined by reputable dayonim in Eretz Yisroel to be facts.
The guidance that we need to give to our talmidim/os includes the notion that while
Walder’s books have inspired so many for so long, the now widely-known nature of his
character and his actions indicate the removal of his books from school and home libraries as the recommended course of action, as the discussions that could be generated surrounding the author himself and the wrongs he committed would be most harmful.
Again, this should be regarded as a chavas daas rather than a psak.
What goes hand in hand with this is the concept that there can be a complete disconnect between an individual’s talent and the evil that he commits… with the result that the talent is to be discounted as irrelevant in such cases.
As for the appallingly tragic end to the Walder story, it must be borne in mind that when a person, of his own volition, has committed a crime of such magnitude, he has opted away from Torah. There can be no justification for that choice. The real focus of tragedy, then, is the terrible impact that was perpetrated upon his victims; our compassion is correctly directed at them alone.
As for mechanchim themselves, one central concept emerges in this context. As Torah
educators, it is imperative that we always remember to foster an atmosphere of kedushah and personal modesty.
May the Av Horachamim have mercy upon Klal Yisroel, and may we be spared further
anguish in the future..
Watch utter disillusionment unfold live here, in some of the 500+ comments: https://t.co/0OCpn3FO30
— Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt (@avitalrachel) January 5, 2022
Ruth Lichtenstein's daughter, Judy Brown, wrote a book titled Hush, a best seller which described a scene where the protagonist witnesses a friend getting raped by her own family in the Ger community. At the time she wrote it under a pen name, "Aishas Chayil" but she was subsequently outed. She then went public to lecture the community about sexual abuse in the Chassidic community.
Her mother, Ruth, is the publisher of Hamodia, and wants to continue her family minhag of keeping her mouth shut about a serial rapist and adulterer, a menace to the frum community. Shame on her, she has learnt nothing.
Talk about tone deaf... have you seen the editorial in Hamodia? Take a look. What a total letdown. @HamodiaUS - you guys need to go back to the drawing board. This kind of drivel simply isn't credible. In fact, it's downright offensive. #chaimwalder pic.twitter.com/YxbaKLMNIH
— Pini Dunner (@pinidunner) January 6, 2022
Funny how Ruth Lichtenstein of @HamodiaUS claims that her paper is following the footsteps of Reb Chaim Ozer and the Imrei Emes זצ"ל – both of whom had images of women published in their publications, as documented in @DerVeker. https://t.co/fhWOeHxZTM
— Shlomo Felberbaum (@ShlomoFelber) January 6, 2022
Editor of hamodia writes in this week's issue that her publication will not be writing about the sex abuse scandal. Seems like a good time for a reminder that her own daughter wrote Hush, a story about sex abuse cover-ups in her community.https://t.co/iTxxeZpCWZ https://t.co/lsT5d5pXH0
— Miriam Moster (@MiriamMoster) January 5, 2022
California prosecutor opposed to vaccine mandates dies of COVID at 44 https://t.co/EFYGH8tBwZ pic.twitter.com/UJkg70fAgQ
— New York Post (@nypost) January 5, 2022
From left to right: Yad La'Isha Rabbinical Court Advocate and Attorney Tehilla Cohen, Orly Vital, and Pnina Omer, Director of Yad La’Isha |
But now I saw it spelled out, nauseatingly, in an essay by the generally wise and respected Rebbetzen Tziporah Heller-Gottlieb. Seriously, I feel that I have to give a warning before linking to her essay, as it is immensely triggering.
Corporate Media Gushed over Theranos Fraudster Elizabeth Holmes pic.twitter.com/86Q0YLyf2n
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) January 4, 2022