Ten lessons for our daughters

My older sister, a long-time fan of this blog, sent me some suggestions for raising Orthodox girls (but they could apply to anyone) and challenged me to add a few of my own. Hers are marked with an asterisk.

1. *Be educated and self-confident enough to know that you can support yourself if necessary.
2. *If someone tells you that you are no good, *they* are no good for you.
3. *Stay away from leaders/teachers who tell you that the rules apply to you but not to them, especially in the realms of money, sex, and abuse/violence.
4. Don't be alone in a room with a man. Rabbis and teachers also need to observe laws of yichud.
5. Don't be afraid to ask questions, and to ask for help.
6. *Develop skills to talk about problems that are "too embarrassing to talk about."
   
7. *Work actively to establish a set of friends, family, therapist, rabbi, blog, whatever -- where you can talk safely about those problems.
8. When you think you have "no choice," you're probably wrong.
9. Learn, and know how to look things up for yourself.
   
10. You don't have to be like everyone else. God made us all different for a reason.

Do you wish you belonged to the "other" group?

Lily left a comment on a recent post suggesting that "working mothers" and "stay-at-home" mothers often wish they were in the opposite category. I know I occasionally fantasize about picking up a briefcase and closing the door behind me each morning, leaving someone else to deal with the mess and the tantrums. I imagine how much more people would respect me, if I had a prestigious job.

I am leaving my family behind in a few minutes, as I am on my way to a two-day conference. My husband took off from work.

What about you? (I guess this question is mainly for mothers, but all input is welcome.) Do you think about what life would be like had you chosen a different work/home balance? Either now, or in the past?

Haveil Havalim, the Jewish and Israeli Blog Carnival, is up over at Frume Sarah. Check it out.

Lag Baomer

We celebrated Lag Baomer on Thursday night. In America, people treat fire with caution.But here, practically every holiday becomes a festival for pyromaniacs. They shoot caps on Purim and burn chametz on every corner erev Pesach. On Chanukah they let kids play with fire at gan parties. And Lag Baomer is the ultimate Israeli holiday for pyromaniacs.

My 6-year-old wanted to have a bonfire too. He called up all of his friends, until he found a boy who didn't have other plans. He had never shown interest in most of those boys before now. We really lucked out because the boy who invited us lives next door to an empty lot. When we arrived, we found that his father had already set up things up. The boy's parents are also olim (immigrants) from Dushanbe (points to anyone who knows what country that is in without looking it up) who arrived in Israel around the same time we did. He knows how to build a fire (see above) and was careful about safety. I was able to teach him one thing--when you roast potatoes in a bonfire it's a good idea to cook them in advance. Otherwise the middle stays raw. Fortunately, we brought the potatoes.

We are not crazy about bonfires, but Lag Baomer is a special day for us because it's my husband's birthday. Happy birthday!

Internet Radio Interview on Megeirot

Eve Harrow of Israel National Radio interviewed me about the Megeirot story. You can listen by going to the site and clicking on Judean Eve, Hour 2. I'm on during the second half of Hour 2, at 24:40.

It will be up until Wednesday, May 28.

Housekeeping and religion: More on Megeirot

Homemaking is a challenge for many Jewish women. Some people are just disorganized. Some did not have competent mothers, or mothers who ran an observant Jewish home, or mothers at all. Add a few small children and maybe a job, and you have a tremendous challenge.

Flylady has helped many make progress with their housework. But Flylady is American, English-speaking, and most definitely Christian. Megeirot filled the need for a supposedly Jewish approach to housekeeping. The problem is that the Torah doesn't tell us much about cleaning drawers. So the bulk of Megeirot's content had to come from non-Jewish sources.

As a reader who completed the first "level" of Megeirot wrote in an email: "I liked the overlay of Jewish, spiritual goals achieved through standard cognitive - behavioral type exercises." In other words, Megeirot consisted of Jewish concepts tacked on to a particular psychological approach. I have no problem with applying psychology in order to achieve a goal. But it's not inherently Jewish.

Faith/Emuna wrote about attending Megeirot, where she was advised to ask for help from above when straightening out clutter. The idea of a personal prayer doesn't disturb me, but saying someone else's prayer might. Same with prayers said over a closet. I don't know that religion should be mixed directly into everything.

According to the original article in Makor Rishon (Hebrew), Sylvie trained the instructors to negate the feelings a student expressed about the contents of her drawer. No matter what the student said, the instructor was told to tell her: "Sheker (falsehood), that is a statement of the ordinary sechel (intellect) which is your non-sechel. You don't have any sechel." Then the student recited a prayer, intended to redirect the woman's thoughts. Replacing negative thoughts with positive ones is a good idea, but telling a woman she has no sechel is not. At any rate, some instructors revised the methods, and even distanced themselves from Sylvie, the founder.

According to Makor Rishon, Rabbi Dov Lior of Kiryat Arba opposed Megeirot from the beginning and warned that it was not based on Jewish teachings. Later he and his wife worked with several women who had been harmed by Megeirot and Sylvie. Other rabbis felt the method had merit, despite the alleged faults of its founder.

We do need prayer, a connection with God, and a sense of higher purpose even when involved in mundane tasks. But we can also achieve spirituality through learning, serving the community, joyful observance of mitzvot, and caring for our families.

Megeirot appears to have helped many women. It probably served as a good support group, whether or not the content was problematic. Anytime people meet frequently with a competent counselor to discuss housekeeping, parenting, marriage, or dieting, they will improve in that area just because they are focusing on it. But when a method involves prayers, and marital and childrearing advice, one must be extremely careful about the person leading the group. Appearing religious and knowledgeable does not qualify someone to give sensitive advice. Even more importantly, a good counselor knows when to refer to a professional. Sylvie may not have taught every group but she was presumably the one instructors turned to for guidance in specific situations. And if the allegations about her are true, that's scary.

Previous article on Megeirot

Good news

No, our car isn't fixed yet; they told us that they hope to hear some word about the part tomorrow. It's been three weeks.

I took my 4yo into town on the bus to run a few errands, and we noticed something new:


Now our town does not have a reputation for being progressive but these little gadgets buzz to let blind people know when the light is green. On the top, a raised arrow points to the relevant crossing. I wish I knew what the pictures mean.

The intersection is near a club for the blind. I know this because I was walking nearby when I saw a man with a white cane bump into an electric pole. (Another sign of the city's progress is that they are gradually burying electric wires as they replace old sewage pipes and put in the new light rail.) I offered to help him get where he was going and told him about my father, who never learned how to use a white cane. This man had become blind only three years ago. When we approached the club, a religious man greeted us and said he would take the blind man the rest of the way. The religious man's expression made me feel uncomfortable about having guided the blind man by letting him lightly rest his hand on my arm, and I said goodbye rather abruptly. I still feel bad about that.

Another cult exposed -- Megefirot

Update: More on Megeirot
Takana forum finds against Megeirot.

"Megirot" (lit. drawers) is one of many recent attempts to help religious women attain a higher spiritual level in their lives. The Hebrew newspaper Makor Rishon has an exposé in today's paper about the method and its founder. Women who have been active for many years and have taught using Megirot's methods are calling it a cult. The method has many followers in the religious Zionist community in Israel.

According to the article by Yifat Erlich, Megirot was founded by Sylvia Dahari. A widowed mother of six originally from Gush Katif (the Jewish settlement of Gaza), she wished to share the "secrets" that helped her cope during the period after her husband was murdered in a terrorist attack. She attracted women with her dynamic personality and her ability to transform mundane daily tasks, especially housekeeping, into a quest for reaching a high level of holiness. The women brought the contents of their drawers to the lessons, where Sylvie (or the teachers trained by her) analyzed the objects and drew conclusions about the woman's inner life.

At a lesson attended by the reporter in preparation for the article, Sylvie told of a woman who came to her saying that she wanted a divorce after two years of marriage. They "did a drawer," which contained tapes of children's songs. Sylvie asked why the woman was saving the tapes, and the woman said they were for her children. Sylvie pointed out that tapes would be worthless by the time the children grew up, and the woman was really saving them for herself because she still felt like a child. The woman agreed with Sylvie, and said that she wanted a divorce because she was afraid of growing up and becoming a mother.

The women interviewed in the article, who had been trained by Sylvie to teach the method, continue to be grateful for many things that they learned. However, they were seriously disturbed by Sylvie's focus on sexual matters, including the close emotional relationships she developed with several husbands of her students. She interfered with the students' private lives and mocked students after class. She deliberately came hours late to class, despite knowing that students travelled long distances.

Here are examples from the article:

• Sylvie told of her son, whose daughter jumped on him and interrupted his learning. "Do everything so that she will listen to you in the end," instructed Sylvie to her son. "I am breaking your hands," he told the girl, and when she jumped on him again, he turned her hand until a "tick" was heard. "That's it, finished," explained Sylvie to the students. "It won't happen again. Fear of punishment is necessary." [Why do these cults always involve child abuse?]
• Two years ago Sylvie began courting L., a married father of seven, who ran a ranch for teens at risk. The two would closet themselves in a room for hours and be seen around the country all hours of the day and night. "Every man has a physical wife and a spiritual wife. I am L.'s spiritual wife," she explained to the students. [Why do these cults always involve sexual impropriety?]
• She told L.'s ["physical"] wife, Y., "It's from Hashem, for your own good. I am building his personality and saving him from spiritual death, and you are interfering in the process." Y. was apparently convinced, and sadly told one of the women: "You think this isn't hard for me? Sylvie is working with me on this."
  
• Sylvie gave a class for single women, and concluded that the reason they remained unmarried was their inability to speak openly with men. She recruited L. [see above] and a 17-year-old boy from his ranch, so the women could practice intimate phone conversations with them. When the women suggested that Sylvie herself marry, she replied, "Marry? For what? Why do I need a husband on my head? What is bad about my life? To serve him? So he will limit me? I don't have enough to do?"
• Sylvie tells women to carefully guard her husband's honor: to stand up when he gets home, cook what he likes, and get into bed five minutes earlier than he. But if the men disagree with Sylvie about something, it's a different matter entirely.
• [We have sex, we have child abuse, so what's left? Money, of course.] Tens of thousands of shekalim went into Sylvie's pocket in the guise of sacred money, with a promise that the donors will merit blessings and be protected from harm. During the course of opening drawers, objects deemed unnecessary or impediments to growth remained with Sylvie. These included electrical appliances, a diamond ring, clothes and more. Women paid to attend lessons, but no receipts were ever given by Sylvie. (Some other teachers do give receipts.)
  

When haredi women began flocking to meetings in Bnei Brak, the Badatz of the Edah Haredit (one haredi community's religious court) banned it. But it took longer for the religious Zionist rabbis to get the picture. Rabi Eliahu of Safed at one time recommended the Megirot method to women, but no longer. He believes a religious court should be convened to discuss the matter.

And some people seem to think that our community is too cynical. But it's clear to me that we're not suspicious enough. Yemima is another religious woman giving classes to promote spiritual growth; I see advertisements for her everywhere. I'd be interested to know more about her too.

The article has more, but it's Friday afternoon and I've covered the main points.

Any readers who have participated in Megirot are invited to email me at mominisrael@gmail.com .

Shabbat shalom.

Trusting our children

One of the most valuable lessons I learned as a mother was about relinquishing control.

"Training" my children to do things before they were developmentally ready wasted time and emotional energy. How I regret those power struggles.

Eventually I realized that there were many things I didn't need to teach my children. I could trust them to meet certain milestones without incentives, threats, or persuasion. These milestones included:

• Sleeping through the night.
• Learning to use the bathroom i.e. toilet train
• Weaning from breastfeeding.
• Getting onto a "schedule" for meals and naps. Babies generally fall into a routine after a few weeks or months.
  
• Eating enough to grow and thrive, if offered a variety of nutritional food, a fork and a spoon.
• Separating from me without a fuss.
• Dressing themselves.
  

I believe that my job is to provide a secure emotional base and a reasonable level of encouragement. I had faith (at least in those areas) that my children's inborn mechanisms and a natural desire to mature would kick in eventually. Unfortunately, in our culture, this isn't simple. Dozens of instruction books help parents train children to do what they would eventually do anyway. It's so frustrating to find out that your child is abnormal; i.e. he is not doing what the books say he should be doing. Until you realize that the problem is the book, not the child.

Not all babies sleep through the night at six weeks, or six months. And it's normal for children to nurse for a few years; both the Talmud and the World Health Organization consider two years a minimum. Kids will sleep all night by the time they are bar or bat mitzvah. And (hopefully) when it's time for them to get married, no one will ask when they got out of diapers.

Yes, there are exceptions. Sometimes a child who develops later than average needs an evaluation. Sometimes we have to speed things along, like when we wean a child from diapers in preparation for preschool, or leave a baby with a sitter. But most children will do what they need to do if we take for granted that they can.

I've listed some behaviors that I don't believe parents need to worry much about. The question that interests me now, and which I hope to explore in a future post, is what *do* we need to actively teach our children?

Norton 360 Review

A while ago I got an offer from MomCentral.com to review a new product, Norton 360 Version 2.0, in exchange for receiving a copy. The program is mainly about keeping computers secure, but what attracted me most was the promise that it would make my computer run more quickly.

My computer runs on Vista. Vista has good security, but its features make it slow and cumbersome.

Because I was the first one to reply to MomCentral's offer Norton sent me a yoga mat as a gift along with the software. I knew that obsessively checking my email would eventually pay off.

I was a bit apprehensive about installing Norton 360, because when I recently had to install a printer, I spent hours on the phone with the printer support people. Even though the printer came with an installation disk for Vista, the manufacturer didn't seem to know a lot about it.

So I wasn't surprised when, after running the Norton 360 CD, I got a message asking me to download installation updates. Then a window opened asking me to please wait while my setup files are updated. I waited, and waited, and waited. I followed the instructions for help, and despite it being a Sunday afternoon, I found support by chat with a Norton representative named Nirmal. After Nirmal confirmed who I was and heard my problem, she offered to take over my computer remotely. Living where I do has made me somewhat suspicious of people from overseas who want access to all of my data, but I overcame my apprehension, followed her instructions, and watched, in between hanging some laundry, while Nirmal did her thing and the cursor moved around by itself. It took about two hours for her to install the program and uninstall the old anti-virus software.

Ever since then Norton 360 Version 2.0 does its thing (unlike my printer, which continues to require repeat phone calls to the manufacturer's support line). My computer definitely runs much faster, thanks to the PC tuneup feature. Also, Norton automatically backs up all of my files and pictures at their online site. You can set it to back up your files on external drives, but I don't do well with hardware (did I mention the printer?) It doesn't back up the files at a set time, like just after I turned on my computer after a three-day Yom Tov. Instead it waits until the computer isn't busy. How come no one ever thought of that before?

Norton 360 also saves logins for different sites; I have several gmail accounts and Norton lets me switch between them without trouble. Most of the time I hardly notice Norton 360; unlike Vista, it doesn't need to ask my permission all the time.

Norton 360 is also supposed to make banking and shopping online more secure.

I haven't used all of the features yet, but so far Norton 360 is easy and convenient. Even with Vista.

Planting the flag on (Google) Earth: In honor of Israel Independence Day

In honor of Yom Haatzmaut, Israel Independence Day, from IsraelAnswers.com:

Planting the flag on (Google) Earth

Plant the Flag

Click the Flag to see Israeli cities marked on Google Earth

If you would like to see Israel with all its communities marked, click on this link. This will tempororily load our points on Google Earth (assuming you already have Google Earth downloaded and installed on your computer). It will do nothing permanent, to your computer, to Google, or to the Earth.

See our page for screenshots of what Google Earth looks like with our points added. Each community is clickable with basic information. We hope to increase the amount of information available over time. [But you only have to download it once.]

Why are we doing this? Our goal is to counter anti-Israel propaganda by providing accurate source material with an accent on the connection between geography and history. Israel is made up of a myriad of people from all over the world and each community reflects the variety that is Israel.

Downloading Google Earth only took a few minutes.

Shlomo Toren is the brainpower behind this project.

Navigating an Israeli Supermarket

I once read a blog post by an American on an extended visit to Israel, raving about how much easier it is to keep kosher in Israel than in the US. True, a variety of kosher food is available just about everywhere in Israel. But keeping kosher in Israel is far from simple.

Lately we have been shopping at Aleph, one of the haredi chains. They tend to focus more on basic items and family-sized packages. The disadvantage is that meat and dairy products with a mehadrin/haredi supervision are much more expensive. But a few years ago Aleph added a selection of meat and dairy products under the supervision of the Israeli rabbinate.

Another issue with products under haredi supervision is that they often contain more fillers and sugars than those with the standard supervision, in order to make the price attractive to haredi families with less disposable income. Examples include "Danuba" mehadrin yogurt, which contains added starch, and Telma Shefa Cornflakes, which contain more sugar than Telma Cornflakes. It pays to read labels.

The brakes on our car began acting up during Pesach, and we are awaiting a replacement part by airmail. My husband takes the bus to work and I avoid carpool arrangements on principle, but shopping is a hassle. Last week I took the bus to one store only to discover, at the checkout, that they don't deliver. Fortunately I ran into a neighbor who gave me a ride home. The other day I put out an SOS to some friends and E. replied that she was planning to go shopping and would be happy to take me along.

Since E. once referred to me as someone who "writes a blog for new olim (immigrants)," I guess it's appropriate to use our trip to share some examples of unusual things a kosher consumer might find in an Israeli supermarket.

E. took me to a large chain store that I used to visit regularly. Because some items were much cheaper than at Aleph, I used to alternate between the stores every few weeks to stock up on cheaper items. But at one point I stopped because the price on those items came down in Aleph. I see now that that was a mistake; canned goods, for example, are significantly cheaper at the store we visited this week.

Since I was last there, the store, along with most of the city's supermarkets, lost its rabbinic supervision. The local rabbinate, known for its zealousness (it refuses to certify restaurants for Passover if they serve legumes), withdrew supervision for any store selling a popular brand of meat. The rabbinate claimed to have found serious irregularities in the factory. This has since been resolved, but the rabbinate also refuses to certify stores that rely on the heter mechirah during this sabbatical year. Some of the fresh food counters did have a kashrut certificate, and most products come in packages sealed by the manufacturer. But there are still issues.

Take this package of chicken wings. It looks like the frozen pieces were taken out of a box, placed on a tray, and wrapped in plastic. The Tnuva sticker was almost certainly slapped on by a store worker. And without supervision on the store itself, I have no assurance that the chicken came from where the label says it does.
Here's another concern for the kosher shopper. Note this sign on the freezer display:

The animal from which this cut of meat was taken has been slaughtered properly according to Jewish law, but not "kashered." Kashering meat involves soaking, salting and rinsing the meat in order to remove the blood. Hardly anyone soaks and salts meat at home; I've never done it, because the kosher butchers and meat-packers take care of it. Presumably the people buying it here prefer it because it's cheaper than kashered meat, and they don't keep kosher anyway.

This pitfall has nothing to do with kashrut:

The label reads "GROUND CHICKEN: From superior ground chicken meat." The smaller letters read, "With the addition of vegetable protein." If you want to know what percentage is meat, forget it. The label won't help you here. Instead, a notice warns consumers to eat the product only when fully cooked; I saw this on other products as well. I'm guessing this is a new well-meaning law on the books, like the one requiring every product containing gluten to be labelled as such. That law backfired, because companies afraid of lawsuits by the gluten-sensitive public began putting the labels on everything.

Then I went to look at the frozen vegetables. My husband still doesn't like me to buy "heter mechirah" produce (sigh) so I had to read the fine print here too:


The one on the left says it is kosher "according to heter mechirah" and the one on the left says that it's "yevul shishit," meaning that it comes from the produce of the sixth year. (It also has an extra "Badatz" kashrut symbol.) I once noticed a similar sign on a can of tomato paste several years after shmittah. it must have been the second or third year of the sabbatical cyle, so I thought the product was a few years old. Later realized that I wasn't meant to take the mention of the sixth year literally; it simply indicated that the produce was not from the problematical seventh year of the sabbatical cycle.

At that point E. reminded me that we needed to check that the store had sold its chametz. One may not eat leavened foods that were in the possession of a Jew over the Passover holiday. There are some products I generally buy in the shuk (open-air market), such as burgul (bulgur) wheat, but not immediately after Pesach; I only buy burgul, flour, pasta, and oats in a store that has sold its chametz. So while E. finished up her shopping I located the following sign:

This assures the customers that the chametz was properly sold. However, the mashgiach (kashrut supervisor) emphasizes that he cannot vouch for the kashrut of the store or any of its products, either on Pesach or year-round.

I half-expected a store worker to ask me why I was taking pictures. After all, this store used to have a sign at the entrance warning customers against writing down prices. But no one seemed to care.

I've only touched superficially on some of the kashrut issues and I hope that my less knowledgeable readers were able to follow.

Many thanks to E. for shlepping me and my groceries, and for vicariously contributing to this post. And join me in wishing her mazal tov on marrying off her oldest son.

"Your daughter is smart, but you don't have to worry"

Our friends recently met their 15-year-old daughter's teacher at the semi-annual parent-teacher conference. The daughter attends a religious Zionist girls' high school, whose matriculation scores regularly rank it among the top three schools in the country.

The teacher told them, "Your daughter is smart, but you don't have to worry. She's not so smart that she'll have a problem getting a shidduch."

This is wrong on so many levels. The teacher is employed by a school, yet she places a low value on women's intelligence, and by extension, education for girls. She assumes that most men feel the same way. And my friends are not looking for a son-in-law for their ninth-grader.

The teacher's statement reflects another common attitude toward intelligence that has nothing to do with sexism: It's just not good for children to be too smart. So when coming across a highly intelligent child some people feel they must minimize that trait, or make a comment about the child's social skills. It's as if they hope to prevent the negative consequences of being so smart, which include not finding anyone to marry and becoming a maladjusted adult.

Tonight and tomorrow we observe Yom Hazikaron, the day Israel remembers its fallen soldiers and victims of terror.

May their memories be for a blessing.

More on Rashi's Daughters

The Rebbetzin's Husband gave a talk in his shul on what is actually known about Rashi's daughters.
We appreciate him taking the time to put it up.

Rashi's Daughters: Joheved - Myths and Facts: Part I and Part II

Keren's interrogation Part II

I changed the title because it was misleading; someone from the police leaked the transcript.

Below is Part II of Maariv transcript of interrogation with hyper-modest mother of 12, in jail after being indicted for child abuse. Introduction; Part I.

By Shmuel Mittelman and Ami ben David.

4/5/2008

“Whoever disturbs my prayers—something bad happens to him”

What brought B, a haredi woman, to strengthen her faith, to preach extreme tzniut (modesty) and to engage incessantly in prayer, all while, according to the accusation, she was abusing her children? She told her interrogator that the exhausting need to travel back and forth to the hospital with her handicapped son, D., opened her eyes and caused her to change direction.

“One day I decided that instead of wasting time in the hospital, with no improvement in the child’s condition, I would dedicate my traveling time to reading prayers from Psalms and Song of Songs. Only then did they see a recognizable improvement in the child, until the last test when the doctors told me, 'Excuse me, we erred. Everything is fine with the child.' Every time I tried to stop the prayers, the child stopped functioning.”

A few mothers of children like D. told me that their child died at age 5 or 6. I so feared that this would happen to me, that I didn’t stop praying. I know that the heavens want me to pray all the time, because it happened a few times that people came in and disturbed my prayers, and something bad always happened to them . . . Everyone with a problem comes to me, I pray, and they are immediately healed and have “shalom bayit” with their husbands.

"The daughter told me that her brother touched her in an intimate place."

Here the mother adds, in all seriousness, to the interrogator: “As long as I have lived in Bet Shemesh there has not been one terror attack in the city. Over five years ago I travelled to America to marry off my daughter, and before I returned an explosion almost went off in town. I returned immediately, and since then we haven’t heard of a single attack or problem with Arabs. Instead of letting me pray peacefully, you are disturbing me. I forgive you, but it is I who watch over you, not you. Even if you tell me that I’m crazy.”

[Below are a series of questions and answers in the interrogation:]

Interrogator: You knew that your children committed incest, a very serious sin, yet you didn’t prevent it, or treat it, or report it.
“I didn’t know about it at all. It’s a lie. I don’t believe it in the slightest. They are wonderful children, and I don’t believe it, unless they were to come and tell me themselves . . . let them come and tell these things to me and my husband.”

I: The boy Y (now 17) molested your daughter H (now 8). You knew but didn’t stop it.
“First of all, don’t use the phrase “You knew but didn’t stop it.” You didn’t see anything. The girl once told me that the boy touched her in intimate places. So I kept watch that she wouldn’t be with any of the boys. Since then she slept in my bed, because I feared that they would touch her when I was sleeping."

Did you take Y for treatment for his sexual urges?
”I didn’t know exactly what was happening to him, because he knew it was against the holy Torah, and he therefore took care to hide it from us so we wouldn’t know."

And how did you react when H told you?
"I spoke to him of course. He smiled, and I thought it was a teenage prank. I didn’t stand for that type of behavior, and therefore I didn’t think there was any problem."

Y. told you that he and your daughter R (now 22) committed full incest at many opportunities.

“If that’s true, all I have left to do is cry and pray for them . . . but how can I believe it?”

Here the interrogator asked the mother to respond to the complaints of the children themselves, that she regularly hit them cruelly. The mother takes pains to be specific: “This never was and never occurred, that we hit them with cruelty,” she emphasizes. “Sometimes we hit them with no physical trauma, to educate only, like every parent is permitted to hit for educational purposes . . . I was always careful when I was upset not to hit until I calmed down, so as not to hit more than necessary. I admit that sometimes I poured water on them because I needed to hit them, and I didn’t want to hurt them. So I chose to pour a little water instead of hitting so they would understand that they weren’t ‘beseder.’”

Maybe once I told one of the children to put a match on Y.

The interrogator quoted the report of the child Y., where he complains that his parents hit him and didn’t let him in the house after he played soccer. The mother’s reaction: “You don’t understand, because you aren’t religious. With us, as in every house that observes the Torah and the commandments, a child needs to learn Torah and not play soccer. This is against our education. With us it’s absolutely normal not to let a child stop learning Torah.

I: Did your husband hit Y in the back so he would sit straight?
M: “Those weren’t cruel blows. That was just a light hit with the hand. I also straighten out their backs.”

I: Did you hit the children with a belt, an electric cable, antennae, and other objects?

“Sometimes I hit them with a belt, but I was careful not to use more strength than [necessary] for a token hit. As it says in the holy Torah: ‘He who withholds the rod hates his son.” Therefore I was careful that they should be educational blows without leaving any marks. I was also careful that they shouldn’t hurt too much, because after all I love them all. In the book of Lamentations it says, “the hands of compassionate women cooked their children.” Rashi explains that those women that didn’t punish their children when they saw them fail to observe the Torah caused the children to be killed later during the destruction of the Temple. So they [the commentators?] agreed with me that it’s better for a child to receive a few blows and not die.”

I: Your son Y tells that you extinguished a match on him.

There was a period when every time I left the house, the children played with fire and burned blankets and sheets. One time I might have told one of the children to put a match on Y, because I feared that the house would go up in flames.

[Mother in Israel: There is lots more, but I have had enough for today. I think we all get the idea; this woman has serious psychological issues, perhaps accompanied by mental illness. She expressed these ideas in her parenting, her understanding of religious texts, and her observance of rituals. I feel sorry for her obsessive, delusional self; for her children who will probably never completely recover; and for the women and their families from her community who fell under her influence.

I will also add that this is what happens when you try to apply verses in the Torah directly to everyday situations, without exercising common sense or seeking guidance from qualified people.

Later in the report B mentions that she and her husband consulted with R. Eliashiv about the handicapped child, and were told not to hit him. She claims that they followed his ruling.]

Keren interrogation, Part I

I changed the title; the article is a transcript of the interrogation and was leaked to Maariv. The hyper-modest mother of 12 is in jail after being indicted for child abuse. Introduction is here. Part II.

By Shmuel Mittelman and Ami ben David.

4/5/2008

The detailed statements of the mother in her interrogation, exposed here for the first time, shed light not only on her allegedly twisted relationship with her children, but allow a glimpse into her fanatically religious world that combines a strange blend of violence and incessant prayer.

B., 54, became famous as the “mother from Beit Shemesh” or the “black mother” because of the black clothes covering her entire body, hair and face. According to the police and prosecution, she shockingly abused six of her twelve children, leaving them physically and emotionally scarred until today.

The indictment served against her in the Jerusalem district court, via the prosecution’s lawyer Dan Bahat, accuses her of no fewer than 25 counts of serious attacks and three counts of abuse of a minor. All this, presumably, is in the name of her extreme religious belief that it is the appropriate way to educate her children. “Batsheva hit Solomon, and afterward he became a successful child,” claimed the mother in defense of her approach, and admonished her investigators.

She hit six of her children and didn’t prevent incest

The event leading to the opening of the investigation happened in early February after, according to the police allegation, B. locked her small son D, who suffers from a mental handicap, in the yard of her Bet Shemesh home for many hours, wearing short clothes, and withheld food and drink from him for many hours despite his screams. The neighbors called the police, who arrived with social workers. The social workers removed the child from the house and placed him in a dormitory [this usually refers to an institution that cares for children in something similar to a home setting].

During the initial investigation the mother assured he police: “You took him on the basis of lies that you invented and believe. My prayers do not return empty-handed, and whoever took the child will pay dearly for it.”

During the investigation the mother was accused of hitting six of her children with a belt, a stick, a rolling pin, and an electric cable, and of cutting the hair of two of her girls as a punishment. In one case she extinguished a match on the chest of one of the children, and regularly poured water on several children to wake them in the morning. In a few instances she refused to allow the children to come home, and they had to eat at friends and neighbors. Similarly, the mother is accused of tying the child D., who suffers from a handicap, by his hands and legs and leaving him outside for a long time.

The judge had to be satisfied with a photo

The police investigators didn’t know how to relate to B. She wrapped herself in no fewer than 12 dresses in the height of the heat, and covered her face with a veil. The prison doctor asked to check her, but she refused to undress. Interrogation by men? Absolutely not, she indicated. I won’t expose my face to a strange man.

Similarly in the courtroom, during the extension of her remand, she refused to allow Judge Aaron Farkash to look at her. “But to hold a deliberation, I must see the person opposite me,” he explained to her lawyer, Vered Berger of public defense. “It won’t help, Your Honor, she is not prepared to expose her face,” she replied, “even if everyone but you leaves the room.” With no choice, in a rare move, the judge was presented with a picture of B’s face as photographed by the prison service, to let him know who the anonymous woman is.

The police sent an experienced investigator, Hagit Nosri, who did her best to extract answers to the serious suspicions. In a[nother] rare move the interrogation was carried out with the mother writing her answers by hand and passing them to the investigator.

She denied most of the accusations, admitted to a few, tried to justify some of them, rebuked her listeners, showed pride in the strength of her prayers and her mission, and outlined her “educational” philosophy. In one of the conflicts between them [B] even reprimanded the female officer for “wearing very tight shirts, and that’s not okay (zeh lo beseder).”

The door is locked after midnight

The transcripts of the interrogation expose a woman with a zealous religious faith, who cares for a variety of children, each with his or her own problems and went through a crisis after difficult pregnancies. Under these circumstances, presumably, she lost control over the children, was beset by attacks of rage, and latched on to twisted methods of powerful punishments and violence in order to try and return order and display authority.

At the beginning of the interrogation the investigator asked B for her reaction to the accusations, that she and her husband regularly hit the children, prevented them from eating and sleeping at home, and knew about the sexual transgressions that occurred among the children. The mother replied angrily: “The charges are a cruel lie. They never existed. You have no proof. Every mother can give a slap from time to time for educational purposes.”

The mother also related to claims that she prevented her children from returning home at night. “I prevented the children from sleeping at home a few times, after they came home from the soccer field at 2 in the morning,” she said. “I told that that the door will be locked after midnight. After sleeping outside twice, they stopped arriving so late. I have never starved my children. At every meeting with them they love to tell about the delicious dishes I prepared for them.”

[I once heard singer Yehoram Gaon tell a similar story on his radio program. He once returned five minutes late for his midnight curfew and found the door locked. He learned his lesson. The difference is the context (and the age of the children involved); did the parents employ this extreme measure as a way of teaching responsibility in an overall loving environment, or is it part of a series of punitive measures meant to instill fear and demand absolute authority?]

Keren interrogation transcript--selected quotes

Here are the highlights of the Maariv article, containing a leaked transcript of the interrogation with the hyper-modest mother of 12 accused of child abuse.

“I’m careful to hit only after I’m calm”

"The mother from Beit Shemesh denies that her children had sexual relations or that she abused them. Maybe symbolic hits. The transcripts of her investigation expose what is hiding behind the black clothes."

By Shmuel Mittelman and Ami ben David.
4/5/2008

"Don’t make me into a monster. . . My prayers prevent terror attacks in Beit Shemesh. The heavens want me to pray, and whenever someone interrupts my prayers, something bad happens to him. I didn’t hit my children cruelly. I gave them light hits, symbolic ones, without any physical damage. . .every mother can give a slap to a child once in a while for educational purposes. It’s my right to throw a “kavkav” (shoe without a back; nowadays a beach shoe) on a child who hits his siblings. . .the daughter that got hit by the rolling pin and whose nose bled, simply was pushed against me instead of going backward. . . I'm careful to hit only when I am calm . . . I don’t believe that my children committed incest with one another . . . I know how to heal children better than the doctors. “

"These are only part of the extreme, even delusional statements of B., the haredi mother from Beit Shemesh, during her police investigation in recent weeks."

Rafi has more. My translation: Part I. Part II.

Bruria Keren in the news again

The veiled mother of 12 from Beit Shemesh, accused of abusing six of her twelve children, is in the headlines after after agreeing to interviews with reporters. Below is the text of the Ynet (Yediot) account in English There is also an extensive Maariv interview in Hebrew; I translated the first part here.

Abuse scandal: Accused mother says allegation a vicious lie

Mother-of-12 accused of severe child abuse goes on record for first time since her arrest, categorically denies all accusations against her

Neta Sela

Published:

05.04.08, 11:55 / Israel News

Ynet exclusive: Beit Shemesh mother-of-12 accused of severe child abuse speaks out for the first time since the horrendous affair was revealed.

K. has been under house arrest in Jerusalem for two weeks. She is awaiting trial for abusing her children and for failing to report incest among the children.

In her first interview to the media, she insists all the accusations against her are a vicious lie: "Nothing of the kind ever happened. I never abused my children. If I hit them, it was nothing more than spanking, and even that didn't happened more than once every couple of months, educational spankings."

Dismay

Monsters among us / Tali Farkash Informing welfare services of sexual assaults in haredi community is a mitzvah Full story

Just over a month ago, the state filed a severe indictment against her, for aggravated assault and abusing a minor. The indictment included multiple counts detailing years of abuse and neglect, as well as graphic details of the ways she used to beat her children using belts, sticks and a rolling pin; smash their faces into her kitchen countertop, wake them up by pouring cold water on them, throw bleach at them, put out matches on her son's chest and cut her daughter's hair as means of punishment.

But K. is sure she will be vindicated, even from the allegations that she knew of incestuous relations among the children and said nothing: "I don't believe any of these lies. I'm well aware of the lies being told about me and this too is a lie," she said.

Nothing more than a game

"There's a proverb – 'He who spares the rod hates his son'," she said when confronted with the allegations she used to chain her children to a chair and hit them. "It tells of how Solomon's mother tied him up and bit him until the Messiah emerged. The kids read it and decided to act is out. It was a game."

While in prison, those around her began fearing for her life. Being a vegan, she stopped eating almost completely. She spends her days praying, reading the Book of Psalms and saying very little. According to reports, she used to communicate with her children by passing them notes.

"After I realized I was wasting my time with them, that they just won't listen to me I decided it was better to spend my time praying," she explains – on paper.

Faced with her radical chastity, we asked how could it be, that she of all people is suspected of committing such unchaste acts. She believes God is testing her, saying the experience has made her faith even stronger: "I know the heavens are testing me, to see if I'll break and give up my chastity.

"Every day I tell the lord how much I love him and when they respected my chastity in prison I saw the good lord hasn't abandoned me… on the contrary, my faith is stronger. I realize the heavens have sent me to see how miserable the people of Israel are. It’s like they told me – 'You have to see what's really going on and who needs you to pray form them.

"The women here began reading Psalms and even the wardens are dressing more modestly… I have seen that Israel is holy and now I pray every day, as hard as I can, for God to have mercy on all of Israel, to help them find their faith, so that everyone can see the coming of the Messiah and be redeemed."

'Mother Taliban'

Supported by the mass wave of modesty sweeping over ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem, K. has found support in many women who have began attending her lessons and following her lead – wearing layers upon layers of clothes. Those layers have dubbed her "Mother Taliban". Her piety seems endless and the women surrounding her tell of devotion to the mitzvas of faith.

The last few years have seen many women begin radically covering themselves up, so much so that the ultra-Orthodox community has expressed some real concern about this eccentric behavior.

K. on her part, insists the dress was acceptable among Jewish women throughout history, and that it is secularism and education that have led to the change: "There is a prophecy saying that before the coming of the Messiah you will see women covering themselves completely and that will be the sign that the Messiah in on his way… there's nothing anyone can do. It is written in the heavens and no one can fight their will."

Supreme Court judge Hanan Melzer, who allowed K. to be released to house arrest, forbade her from having any contact with her children. She still cannot understand where the allegations against her came from.

"If I could talk to men I'd ask the judge where's his self respect, how can he even bring himself to ask me such things," she said.

Is there anything she would like to tell her children? "My sweet children, I love you very much," she wrote on a piece of paper, "and I'm not angry at any of you. I love God more than anyone."

Thanks to Rafi and Tamiri for sending me links.

Holocaust Remembrance Day: One family's story

In honor of Holocaust Memorial Day, I'll share with you a section from a book about daily life in my father's shtetl. The book is called Memories of Ozarov, by Hillel Adler. Second-generation survivors owe a great debt to authors such as Adler, who died in 1996. In addition to this (possibly exaggerated) account, the book contains the only existing photograph of my father as a child.

My grandfather frequently served on the local rabbinic court. Here is what Adler writes about him:

Pinchas lived with his family at 21 Main Street. He was one of the most talented Talmudists. You could often see him at his table by a window immersed in the study of his holy books. His wife Faiga had a little milk and cheese business. Every morning she would make deliveries to her Jewish customers. And if one of those customers actually came to their house to fetch a liter of milk while Faiga was away, Reb Pinchas was displeased. He would have much preferred to avoid opening the door so as not to lose precious time away from his portion. Despite Pinchas' entire days spent in prayer, the good Lord never seemed to send down enough from Heaven to feed his three [MiI: four] children, of whom the eldest was a girl named Hendel.

This daughter Hendel shone in her studies of Yiddish, Polish and Hebrew. She also learned Talmud with her father, very rare for a girl of that time, and took part in the settlement of disputes with her father.

With such Talmudic knowledge, Reb Pinchas regretted that she was not a boy, who might in that case have one day become a rabbi. Who would have thought at that time that by the end of the century there could be such a thing as a female rabbi! But in Ozarow Hendel had to be content with giving lessons to a few children whose parents were well-off. One of these children was Chana, the daughter of Rabbi Reuven Epsztein, a girl who had been allowed to forgo the public Polish school. Hendel taught her the required seven-year curriculum.

On September 6, 1939, the sixth day of the war, Hendel was shot by the first German patrol in Ozarow. (pp. 56-57)

In 1942, when Germans decided to liquidate the town, my father escaped with false papers. My grandfather was concerned about whether my father should take the tefillin made according to the opinion of Rashi, or Rabbenu Tam. My father realized that carrying tefillin (phylacteries) was out of the question. He cut off his peyot (sidelocks) and removed his thick glasses. Then he walked away as if he knew where he was going. No one stopped him (at that point).

After wandering around Poland, he worked in a German factory along with other foreigners brought to replace the dwindling German workforce. Only after the war did my father learn that his parents, younger sister, and brother, were murdered in the death camp of Treblinka.