If You Tickle Us...

Open Letter from "yankel" Dear Mr Frand, Firstly, let me introduce myself. I'm just an average Golders Greener, have only eaten Kedassia meat for the last 40 plus years, used to daven in Halpern shuls, but still daven in very right wing shuls (no eiruv carriers) send my kids to the most frum schools in NW, and try and do whats right in the eyes of Hashem. I go to work everyday, schvitzing to make a living to enable me to bring up my kids frum and correctly. Oy and 1 more thing I almost forgot to mention - I try to respect what my Rabonim and magid shiurim have to say. Your letter throws all this to the wind! What message are you sending out to me? I can't trust my rabonim I've learnt from and davened with for all these decades? I may as well send my kids to Christ College; they will probably end up being better guided knowing right from wrong! (Will save a fortune in school fees too!) I am thoroughly appalled by your recent announcement naming 3 ra

The time has come to bow out of Towelgate. I shan't refer to it as the 'Painful Saga' as those who coined that name had in mind only the pain of the poor accused and his 'distinguished family'. But not a word was heard from those quarters to acknowledge even the existence of victims and never mind a kind word for their pain. It's a propitious time of year for reckoning so as we move on from the winter of discontent that has rocked our community it wouldn't be a bad idea to stand back and reflect. The basic facts hardly need repeating and the outcome is still far from certain. The reverberations will be felt for some time to come and there will be ample opportunity to analyse the causes and effects, exposures and cover ups, successes and setbacks, and winners and losers. On balance, however, I think we as a community have plenty to be proud of. We have shown that rabbis too can be responsive when the weight of public anger is brought to bear down on them. D

Harav Wosner's T'Shuvah, Highlights By ‘Moish’ Much of the confusion in the recent case has been due to the fact that there is so little by way of precedent in terms of how to deal with rabbis who are alleged to have acted 'improperly'. Within the Charedi world, although such issues have surely arisen, they have been dealt with (if at all) so furtively as to leave barely a smidgen of record in the halachic literature. Precedents from the Modern Orthodox community are easier to find, but, well, they're modern anyway so what do you expect? The one recent case that does spring to mind is that of Rabbi Mordechai Tendler of Monsey. Without going into details, the rabbi concerned was expelled from the American RCA on account of his alleged misbehaviour with women in a counselling context (ring any bells?) and a group of his local colleagues took it upon themselves to examine the evidence against him and proceeded to publicise their verdict. Whilst the parallels are fa

Leil Yud Tes Teves 5763 [1 January 2013] Statement The Union may not be responsible for the alleged misbehaviour of one its Dayonim. However its lack of willingness or ability to deal with the matter in any way is perceived to be unacceptable and is a matter of great embarrassment. As a result we have been put in an impossible position where our Shul has fallen victim to the situation just by virtue of our official association with the Union. We must do all that we can to protect the Shul and its membership from this. The internal equilibrium and stability of our k ehilla is far more important than with whom our Shul is affiliated. I am therefore fully behind the Executives decision to call this meeting, in order to examine and explore our options. We must take into account all the ramifications of any decision we make. We need to enlist Hakodosh Boruch Hu ’s help to make the correct decision, and many more t efillos to invoke His rachamim that this terribly destructive g