Profile Rabbi Dovid E. Eidensohn

Showing posts with label Promoting Biblical Family Values in a World Going the Other Way. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Promoting Biblical Family Values in a World Going the Other Way. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

New Program - Promoting Biblical Family Values



                  Promote Biblical Family Values:

Stop Draft of Women in Military
Stop Sexual Abuse and Rape of  Women in Colleges and the Military
Make Family Affordable
Stop Government Pressure for Anti-Biblical Family Values
By Rabbi David E. Eidensohn Disciple of World’s Greatest Rabbis Aharon Kotler, Moshe Feinstein, and Yosef Shalom Elyashev, all of blessed memory

The Talmud tells us that in the End of Days, prior to the Coming of the Messiah, the Satan will be given great power to do things that never happened in earlier times. Although great sins always snared people, there were still some standards. For instance, there are sins of eating forbidden good and stealing, and yet these sins are common with some people. But even people who do many sins refrained from insulting their parents or the parents of their spouse. But in the era before the Coming of Messiah family values will collapse, not everywhere, but relative to earlier times. New sins in family will appear. “A son will berate his father, the wife her mother-in-law.”
The new level of sin is the profaning of Derech Erets, the Way of the World. This means, that people have an innate appreciation of how to behave as people, as human beings. Before the arrival of Messiah the ability to refrain from behavior that defiles our humanity will be weakened. The most sensitive level of Derech Erets is with family, how we treat our parents especially. True, dealing with all human beings is Derech Erets, the Way of the World, a holy obligation upon each person created “in the Image of G-d.” But there is a special and higher level of treating our parents properly. After all, they brought us into the world and they raised us, and we must show our appreciation. If a stranger raised us, would we not appreciate it? Surely, if our parents have us as children and raise us for many years, we must honor them. This is the highest level of Derech Erets, the Way of the World. And before the Coming of Messiah, the Satan will have the power to loosen this appreciation even though before that time people generally honored their parents.
We find in the Written Bible, the Torah, three sections. Torah, Prophets, and Holy Writings. Torah is the Five Books of Moses and basic history and laws. Prophets is the work of the prophets. Holy Writings are entire books such as Psalms of David, the Book of Job, the Book of Daniel, etc.
The end of the second section of the Bible, the Prophets, is about Elijah the Prophet. G-d spoke of the Redemption and said, “I am going to send you Elijah the Prophet … and he will restore the hearts of the fathers to the sons, and the hearts of the sons to the fathers…lest I come and destroy the world.” It is very rare for a biblical book to end on a bad note, one of curse and punishment. But if the world does not respond to Elijah’s efforts to restore Derech Erets, the Way of the World, and the feeling of humanity in family, G-d will destroy the world.
This is our time and our challenge.
There is a book taught by Elijah to a great rabbi of the Talmud known as Tono Divei Eliyohu, the Teachings of the Yeshiva of Elijah. The first lesson there is that Derech Erets, behaving like a human being to other human beings, is greater than the Torah. This has become a popular phrase, “Derech Erets precedes the Torah.” And today, in times of great testing and great evil, the Satan is empowered to test us with Derech Erets. And we must withstand the pressures.
The gemora that talks about this testing time adds that things will be so difficult that “We have nobody to rely upon other than our Father in Heaven.” Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman, the greatest disciple of the Chofetz Chaim explained, “This does not mean we should despair. It means that G-d is with us when we struggle even against the darkest day in our history and the furious power of the Satan. We will merit the Coming of Messiah because we trust in G-d and defend ourselves against the prevailing temptations to violate Derech Erets even in family matters.

Stop Draft of Women in Military
The above gemora mentions that in the End of Days before Messiah arrives, governments will deny biblical values. In America we have President Obama working very hard to use the military as a tool to violate biblical family values. He has appointed an openly gay person as a very senior general, and has turned the traditional male military into a male-female army. Now, women are weaker and smaller than men. You never heard of a woman who can play on a professional football team. But Obama worked hard to bring women into the military and shoot it out and smash and stab men who are stronger than women. What will happen to the weaker ladies? But Obama does this not because it enhances the military, but because it enhances equity, equity with ladies who belong in the house raising children, and equity with men who are openly gay and who will influence the military to become accepting of gay actions, even publicly. Woe to an American lady who is captured by ISIS. Her life will be a slavery publicized for the entire world to see the horror that Obama created for American women.
Biblical Family Values means that we take a look at Harvard and its tragic failure to protect women from rape, see below the entire article. We also want to publish facts on abuse in the American military which is a growing failure with no end to the most hideous suffering of women who joined the military voluntarily. Now the government is getting ready to force all American women into the military where even more of them can be raped. In this article, we deal mostly with Harvard, as the military has a huge annual book with the stats on rape and abuse, and we can’t use all of that stuff right now. But the Harvard article is only a few pages long, and it says very important things, so now we will talk about Harvard, and hopefully, in a later article, we will deal with the military. The military has some very complex problems that has created a great uproar in the United States Senate and elsewhere, and we have to do that separately. Now back to Harvard.
In September of 2015 the Harvard Gazette, the official publication of Harvard University, devoted much space to the problem of women being raped and abused sexually in Harvard College. The article is published here below. But we quote here some very troubling parts of that article. In the article, these sections are in red, as they are here.
The survey found that sexual harassment is a problem for women students all across the University, with 72.7 percent of undergraduate women reporting an incident of harassment during their time at Harvard, while fewer than 62 percent of undergraduate women in the broader 27-school survey reported such incidents.
Almost half of Harvard’s female graduate and professional School students reported being harassed, and 21.8 percent of these women said a faculty member had sexually harassed them.
Here is the article. I find it amazing that the smartest professors of Harvard are wondering why Harvard came out so poorly regarding suffering of women there. For one thing, here is a part of that article: But when asked how likely University officials were to take action against an offender, 46 percent of female undergraduates said they had little or no confidence that they would. In addition, 84 percent expressed some doubt any action would be taken. Overall, 68 percent of Harvard students surveyed were dubious of follow-through against offenders.
How in the world could Harvard’s geniuses who run the school have ignored the most basic thing that is to create confidence that a molester would be punished? If that wasn’t done, what are they doing about these things?
But allow me to conclude with my thoughts about Harvard and the military. These are both organizations with tremendous talent and money. But saving women from rape is beyond their ability.
Biblical Family Values are the answer. In my family, boys and girls never mix, ever. A secular writer once commented in amazement about how in Israel the ultra-Orthodox girls are virgins. It is nothing to be amazed about. Ultra-Orthodox children are mostly virgins. But when you go to Harvard, and are not home, but in a dormitory that is flowing with men and women who are boiling with biology, and drinking and who knows what else, you are going to have rape and abuse.
Another point. My children and ultra-Orthodox children marry young. When you have people earning a  doctorate before they marry, you get Harvard. Thus, the military and Harvard and modern colleges with co-ed dormitories will never be free of rape and abuse. And yet, they will never be honest enough to accept that without separation of male and female there will always be suffering women. They know it, of course, but since their purpose in life is to be modern, they have to accept that women will be raped and too bad because it is more important to be modern.

Troubling findings on sexual assault
Harvard’s portion of national study paints disturbing picture
September 21, 2015 | Editor's Pick
092115_sex_survey_183.jpg
Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photographer
President Faust discussed the survey results with students Monday night at the Science Center.
By Christina Pazzanese, Harvard Staff Writer
In tandem with the release of findings from a new national survey of college and university students about sexual assault, the University’s Task Force on the Prevention of Sexual Assault made Harvard’s data public Monday, including results that paint a disturbing picture of sexual misconduct here on campus.
In a 13-page letter to President Drew Faust, Task Force Chairman Steven E. Hyman said that the survey, which was administered to nearly 20,000 degree-seeking students enrolled at Harvard College, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS), and the 10 professional Schools last spring, makes clear that sexual assault is “a serious and widespread problem that profoundly violates the values and undermines the educational goals of this University.”
Women at Harvard College appear especially vulnerable to sexual assault, the survey said. More than 60 percent of women in the College’s Class of ’15 responded to the survey. Of those, 31 percent said they had experienced some sort of unwanted sexual contact at Harvard. Ninety women characterized that contact as what the survey termed “nonconsensual completed or attempted penetration involving physical force, incapacitation or both,” the most serious category of misconduct. This group comprises 16 percent of female College seniors.
Faust finds results “deeply disturbing”
In an email to students, faculty, and staff, Faust called the survey results “deeply disturbing” and said the findings reinforce the “alarming frequency” with which Harvard students experience sexual assault, and she called for a Monday evening meeting to discuss the results with them.
“All of us share the obligation to create and sustain a community of which we can all be proud, a community whose bedrock is mutual respect and concern for one another. Sexual assault is intolerable, and we owe it to one another to confront it openly, purposefully and effectively,” Faust wrote.
The survey was part of an effort led by the Association of American Universities (AAU), a consortium of 62 research universities, to better understand the nature and pervasiveness of sexual assault, harassment, and other misconduct on college campuses. More than 150,000 undergraduate, graduate, and professional students at 27 private and public research universities across the country took part, making it one of the largest surveys of its kind.
Overall, 19.3 percent of eligible students responded to the AAU survey, though rates at each institution varied depending on the type of school and size. At Harvard, 53 percent of the eligible students participated, the highest rate among the universities surveyed. Faust said she took that as a “positive sign” that students recognize sexual assault as a serious issue.
Harvard fared slightly better than the averages reported by students in the national survey aggregate. Four percent of Harvard students surveyed said they had at least one incident of nonconsensual sexual contact last year. Additionally, 1.4 percent said the contact was completed, or involved attempted penetration by use of force, incapacitation, or both. Nationally, 6.5 percent of students reported some form of unwanted of sexual contact, while 2.4 percent reported penetration or attempted penetration by force or incapacitation.
Last April, the Harvard task force asked students to complete an online survey about sexual assault. Students were asked a series of questions about various kinds of sexual misconduct that they may have encountered while they were enrolled at the University, regardless of where or when the incident took place, or whether the perpetrator was part of the Harvard community. The survey focused on nonconsensual sexual activity conducted through the use of physical force, incapacitation, or both.
The survey found that sexual harassment is a problem for women students all across the University, with 72.7 percent of undergraduate women reporting an incident of harassment during their time at Harvard, while fewer than 62 percent of undergraduate women in the broader 27-school survey reported such incidents.
Almost half of Harvard’s female graduate and professional School students reported being harassed, and 21.8 percent of these women said a faculty member had sexually harassed them.
“We must commit ourselves to being a better community than the one the survey portrays,” Faust wrote in her email. “It is up to all of us to ensure that Harvard is a realization of our ideals, not our fears.”
Also in response, Rakesh Khurana, Danoff Dean of Harvard College, announced that the College would host three town-hall style discussions with staff from the Office of Sexual Assault and Prevention this week.
“We have it in our power to make Harvard better,” he said in a message to students. “This is a moment for all of us to take stock of what we stand for as a community” and to make the necessary changes to better Harvard and the world.
At a 90-minute meeting Monday evening before an overflow crowd at the Science Center, Faust and Khurana answered questions from students following a presentation of the survey results by David Laibson ’88, the Robert I. Goldman Professor of Economics. Laibson, who serves on the task force and chairs the Economics Department, was closely involved in the survey’s design and analysis.
As an institution of higher education, learning from these survey results “is something we are especially equipped to do,” Faust said.
“We want to use those skills to figure out how can we combat this, how can we make it stop, and how can we help the individuals who are trapped in these terrible, terrible circumstances from ever having to have those kinds of things happen to them again. How can we help future students not have to confront the same realities?” she said. “Let’s use every tool that we have to make this a better place.”
Students attending the community meeting asked that the University offer more opportunities to gather in both large and smaller groups not just to discuss their views about sexual assault policy initiatives and programs, but also to comfortably share their experiences in the hopes of learning more about the underlying issues that contribute to such traumatic incidents. Many expressed support for better and faster access to mental health services and the creation of “safe spaces” so that final clubs events were not a focus of undergraduate social life.
Noting the essential value that students derive by socializing and learning from Harvard’s diverse student population, Khurana appeared to signal that single-sex entities like final clubs may face greater scrutiny in the near future.
“Any organization that attaches itself, recognized or unrecognized, to Harvard, recruits from Harvard students and enjoys any sort of status by being affiliated with the College has to be in synchronization with the mission of the College,” he said.
Alcohol use a major risk factor
Unsurprisingly, the use of drugs and alcohol as a “tactic” or precursor to sexual assault on college campuses accounts for a “significant” percentage of reported incidents, the AAU survey found.
At Harvard, when students were asked if anyone had been consuming alcohol before an incident of completed or attempted penetration when incapacitation was a factor, 89 percent of respondents said they had been drinking, while 79 percent said the perpetrator had been drinking.
“The percent of alcohol is so high that prevention efforts are not likely to succeed if we do not, as part of our final report, suggest approaches to decreasing the harm associated with student drinking,” Hyman wrote in his letter to Faust.
More than 75 percent of Harvard College women reported the assaults took place in student Houses, while at least 15 percent said they occurred at what the survey categorized as “single-sex organizations that were not fraternities or sororities,” a category that most closely aligns at Harvard with the non-affiliated final clubs.
Not serious enough to report?
One reason why reliable information about the pervasiveness of sexual assault on college campuses is so hard to come by, analysts say, is that, historically, few students choose to report such incidents to someone in law enforcement, at a university, or at another organization. The AAU survey bears out this unsettling truth. Just 5 to 28 percent of students nationally said they had reported an incident, depending on the type of misconduct. Among those who said they did not report an incident, the most common reason given was a belief that it was not serious enough to warrant action. Other explanations included that the student felt “too embarrassed, ashamed, or that it would be too emotionally difficult” to report the incident, or that she or he “did not think anything would be done about it.”
On that score, Harvard appears no different. Here, 80 percent of female undergraduates who said they had been penetrated as a result of incapacitation did not formally report the assault, while 69 percent who said they were penetrated by the use of physical force did not report the instances.
Fifty-four percent of Harvard student respondents who said they “had seen or heard someone acting in a sexually violent or harassing way” did nothing to intervene. A full 80 percent who said they had seen a “drunk person heading for a sexual encounter” indicated that they did not take any action.
Hyman said the survey results are “entirely congruent” with testimony that the task force has heard since its formation. “The fact that Harvard data is quite similar to that of other private universities within the AAU gives little comfort,” he wrote to Faust. Noting the “deeply ingrained” nature of sexual assault, Hyman wrote, “It reminds us that we cannot simply make and implement a series of recommendations and consider that we have done our work.”
Messages on assault not being received
Despite initiating several efforts in the last two years to better confront sexual assault on campus, such as the adoption of the University-wide Title IX policy, the establishment of the Office for Dispute Resolution to investigate misconduct, and the addition of 50 Title IX coordinators to work across Harvard on such issues, many students said they are not well-informed about where to get support, how to report sexual assault or misconduct, how the University defines sexual assault and misconduct, or what happens after a report is made.
Just 24 percent of Harvard students said they were very or extremely knowledgeable about where to go for help, and only 20 percent said they were very or extremely knowledgeable about where to report an incident. When asked what happens after a report is filed, 82 percent said the process wasn’t entirely clear to them, and only 15 percent said they fully understood what constitutes sexual assault or misconduct at Harvard. In all four areas, the percentage of Harvard students who said they were very or extremely knowledgeable was consistently smaller than the national survey average.
“Clearly, we must do more,” Faust wrote. “University leaders — starting with the president, the provost, and the deans — bear a critical part of the responsibility for shaping the climate and offering resources to prevent sexual assault and [to] respond when it does occur.”
To that end, Faust has asked the deans from each School to prepare “school-specific plans” that begin to facilitate community discussion, engagement, and action surrounding the survey findings.
The task force and the University’s Institutional Research Office will further analyze the survey data to better understand the full results. In January, the task force will submit a report and make recommendations to Faust.
Confidence in the University’s ability to handle sexual assault cases vigorously and appropriately varies widely.
Although 61 percent of all Harvard students think the University is “very or extremely likely” to take a report of sexual assault seriously, only 43 percent of female undergraduates at the College and at the Division of Continuing Education said they feel that way.
Asked if they thought the University would conduct a fair investigation of any reported assault claim, 41 percent of Harvard students said they were only “somewhat” certain officials would do the job properly, while 29 percent said the process was “very” likely to be fair. Female undergraduates were a bit more skeptical, with 45 percent saying a fair investigation was “somewhat” likely.
But when asked how likely University officials were to take action against an offender, 46 percent of female undergraduates said they had little or no confidence that they would. In addition, 84 percent expressed some doubt any action would be taken. Overall, 68 percent of Harvard students surveyed were dubious of follow-through against offenders.
The national survey was designed to provide university communities, federal policymakers, and educational researchers with greater insight into the scope, frequency, and nature of sexual assault and misconduct on American college campuses, the AAU said in a press statement issued Monday.
The survey results come amid growing pressure on colleges and universities from the Obama administration, Congress, the Department of Education, and activists to codify and make transparent their procedures for investigating, disciplining, and reporting sexual assault cases, as well as the case outcomes.
Other participating Ivy League schools included Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University. Public universities involved included the University of Virginia, the University of Michigan, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of Texas at Austin, among others.
END OF HARVARD ARTICLE
This is the end of this, our first discussion on Biblical Family Values.
We invite everyone to write us what they think about our work, with comments. We also invite new people to join our email list.
Shalom,
Dovid E. Eidensohn
Monsey, NY 10952
845-578-1917
dddeid@verizon.net