MICHAEL HOFFMAN: Why the Double Standard?

The Hoffman Wire

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Republicans Seek to Ban Sharia Law but give a free pass to Rabbinic Law:

Why the Double Standard?

 By Michael Hoffman | May 30, 2012 

http://revisionistreview.blogspot.com/2012/05/republicans-seek-to-ban-sharia-law-but.html

Observe the statement from the first article, "Beth Din" (see below) that the rabbinic court is ruled by "Jewish law" and "Jewish law" is based on the Shulhan Arukh, in other words, not on the Word of God, but on the word of a long dead man, Rabbi Joseph Karo, compiler of the Shulhan Arukh. The judge of the rabbinic court is a "highly esteemed Talmudic scholar" and "halakhic genius." Note that the credentials of the judge of the rabbinic court are based on his scholarship in the Talmud, not the Word of God. His "genius" is in rabbinic law ("halakha"), not God's law.

Nothing about rabbinic (Talmudic) law bothers the American campaigners against Sharia law, such as Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, even though rabbinic law rules the Brooklyn district attorney's office, to give but one example: school teachers at Talmudic schools in Brooklyn must obtain permission from a rabbi before first reporting the molestation of children to the Brooklyn District Attorney. According to the New York Times, "the Brooklyn district attorney, Mr. (Charles J.) Hynes, has not publicly opposed the position."

According to Sharon Otterman of the New York Times, "...in molestation cases, (rabbinic) religious courts are often convened on an ad hoc basis to adjudicate on a narrow question — like whether someone accused of molesting is fit to continue working at a school, or whether compensation should be made to a person making accusations. The judges tend to take actions like switching an accused person’s job, monitoring him or her, ordering therapy or ordering compensation for a victim. Sometimes religious courts do not fully accept the testimony of children or women, making proving molestation claims very difficult."

Another example: the worst serial rapist of children in the history of Brooklyn New York, surpassing any Catholic priest, is Avrohom Mondrowitz, someone you probably never heard of.

"Avrohom Mondrowitz was indicted...in the 1980s on eight counts of child abuse and five counts of sodomy involving boys ages 9 to 15. He fled to Israel before he could be arrested. Victims’ rights groups say Mr. Mondrowitz has many more victims, perhaps in the hundreds. Michael Lesher, a New Jersey lawyer representing some of the reported victims, uncovered federal documents that Mr. Lesher contended showed that Mr. Hynes’s office approved a decision in 1993 to drop efforts to extradite Mr. Mondrowitz. Mr. Hynes’s office has long denied dropping those efforts, and in 2007 made a new push to bring Mr. Mondrowitz back, but Israel’s Supreme Court ultimately ruled against extradition." (Ibid., New York Times).

Beth Din 

(rabbinic law court)

http://givashamorah.org/Home_Page.html

Beth Din Givas Hamorah is a rabbinic court that adjudicates civil disputes between Jewish litigants who agree to be bound by Orthodox Jewish law as laid down in Shulhan Arukh Hoshen Mishpat and its glossators. Marital transactions such as marriage, divorce, yibbum and halitzah may also be executed in our court.

Our court consists of a panel of three dayyanim (justices) drawn from a pool of over 20 rabbanim who are Talmudic scholars by profession and experts in Jewish law. Our rosh beth din (chief justice) is the renowned Rabbi Yehoshua Gluck, a graduate of Slabodka Yeshiva and a highly esteemed Talmudic scholar and halakhic genius.

In accordance with halakha (Jewish law)  and in order to preserve the integrity of halakhic jurisprudence, our beth din provides all its services absolutely free of charge. Moreover, our beth din will not accept any payment, donation or gift from anyone utilizing our services.

Our beth din was founded in order to address the abuses and inefficiencies of most other major bate dinim, such as the endlessly drawn-out litigation process designed to exploit and maximize a profit from litigants. Furthermore, we are the only beth din who fully comply with the rule that hanotel sekhar ladun dinav betelim: whoever takes recompense to adjudicate, his judgements are null. (End quote)

Here below are additional, multiple examples of rabbinic law leading to grievous harm in the United States (Lakewood, N.J., Monsey, N.Y., and Baltimore, Md.) with no Republican "Christian" conservatives standing up to campaign against rabbinic law, as they do Sharia law.

For Jewish Orthodox Children: No Justice -- No Peace

Huffington Post| May 17, 2012

While Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes boasts that he stemmed the tide of child molestation in Brooklyn's Catholic community by insisting that the Bishops sign a "memo of agreement" to turn over all allegations directly to his office, this is a far cry from his agreement with the Agudah rabbis allowing them to decide which alleged molesters are reported to the police...

Regardless of Mr. Hynes' claims that he "expects" that these allegations will "also be reported to his office," he has never criticized the rabbis for not reporting them despite the fact that there exists not a single documented case in which a leading rabbi in Brooklyn has reported a molester to the police.

An account detailed in "Tempest and the Temple: Jewish Communities and Child Sex Scandals" (Brandeis University Press, 2009), citing research published in 2008 in the Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, documents that in at least one case Mr. Hynes allowed a Beit Din (rabbinical court) lead by Rabbi Dovid Feinstein to decide the outcome of a grand jury investigation.

Following the Beit Din ruling in March of 2000, the D.A. dropped charges against Rabbi Shlomo Hafner of molesting a 10-year-old hearing-impaired boy, with one of the rabbis bragging that "We educated the D.A. on how to properly conduct a sex abuse trial."

Prosecutorial tolerance in Brooklyn and other Orthodox enclaves (such as Lakewood, N.J., Monsey, N.Y., and Baltimore, Md.) for rabbis protecting child molesters is all the more disturbing at a time when the national and global trend is increasingly to crack down on cover ups.

In Missouri, a Catholic Bishop was indicted for failing to report an abusive priest, and four Amish Bishops were convicted of failing in their duty as mandated reporters to inform the authorities of a child molester in their church. Officers of the University of Pennsylvania were arrested for failing to report allegations against football coach Jerry Sandusky, and the Archbishop of Philadelphia is being tried for endangering the welfare of children after allowing accused priests to work with children without alerting police or unsuspecting parents. In Los Angeles, the Archbishop has been investigated by the FBI for fraudulently passing off a pedophile priest as safe to be teaching children...

But in the name of "cultural sensitivity" the State's Attorney's office in New Jersey tolerates a "wall of silence" by rabbis in Lakewood, who proudly announced in the Asbury Park Press in 2009 that all cases of sexual abuse against children are "handled" by a special Beit Din that was set up by the local yeshivah.

...(New Jersey) State's Attorney Marlene Lynch Ford has made no efforts to force the rabbis to turn over cases of child abuse that they have "adjudicated," despite the fact that it is a crime in New Jersey for any adult to fail to report suspicions of abuse to the authorities.

In Baltimore, there has been extensive coverage...documenting the Va'ad Harrabanim (the Council of Rabbis) putting pressure on victims of abuse and their advocates to keep silent, and yet law enforcement agencies refuse to even investigate as long as victims are still too intimidated to come forward.

In many cases of child molestation in the Catholic Church, including in Long Island, N.Y., Boston and Philadelphia, prosecutors have convened grand juries to subpoena all the records of abuse allegations, and in one example in Belgium last year, police raided church offices to investigate hidden records. In cases of rabbinic cover ups, however, prosecutors have not even gone as far as asking nicely and respectfully for the rabbis to give them all of the names of the alleged molesters they know about, and have certainly not put any pressure at all on the rabbis for breaking the law and endangering the welfare of children.

(End quote)

JOIN MICHAEL HOFFMAN IN DEMANDING:

Fight Child Molestation - Ban Rabbinic Law in the USA

www.revisionisthistory.org

 But Some Rabbis Do