BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

JUDAISM & ABUSE: EXPECTING BETTER This was written a few years back. Despite strides in educating leading rabbinic authorities it seems that nothing much has changed… not yet. Some are truly working on the problem and I beg them to keep working on it. Sometimes preserving a marriage AT ALL COSTS or allowing a manipulative man to make a woman an AGUNAH and then looking the other way - is NOT the way to go. Allowing the verbal & emotional abuse of children in the name of Torah and keeping it hush-hush for appearances is enabling the abuse! Loshen Hara can be a mitzvah if it stops an abuser from taking advantage of his family, his friends and the world at large. If You Beat Him He Will Not Die by Richard Silverstein A personal and theological meditation on child abuse As spiritual communities, it is enormously important that we provide grief work as part of the process of healing [from the effects of abuse]. At the same time, we have to take that lesson of choosing to...

Releasing Guilt We all know what it feels like to feel guilty about something and many of us struggle with feeling guilty all the time. Guilt makes us feel that we are somehow unforgivable. While this experience is common, it is detrimental to our overall well-being. Feeling guilty generally promotes a sense of powerlessness-an anguished agonizing over a past action that cannot be changed . The problem with this is that it doesn't inspire us to forgive ourselves, make amends for mistakes, and move forward free of emotional baggage. Originally, guilt referred to the fine paid for proven wrongdoing. Once you made the payment, in time, amends or money, for what you had done , you were free-free of the sentence and free of the guilt. The problem with guilt as it is often experienced now is that it becomes a permanent state of mind for some people. In this case, it is a neurotic preoccupation rather than a fair assessment of wrongdoing followed by a course of action that leads to repa...

ACT NOW ISRAEL! The time's come for Israel to act. Swiftly. Decisively. Hamas is on a non-negotiable path to all out war. That's what they want. Let me repeat my mantra - WATCH THE ACTIONS NOT THE WORDS. The daily kassams into Gaza aren't enough to prove this? Then how about years & years of broken promises and 'negotiating' while they continue to arm themselves. While a Gaza invasion would costly for the IDF, something has to happen or Hamas will continue to bleed Israel while arming for its annihilation. Time for action, Israel. The temptation of immediate fortification By Israel Harel The education minister said that opening the school year in Sderot is conditional on the defense minister's signing a guarantee for the pupils' security. The angry response to her statement - to the effect, "why doesn't she guarantee to rid schools of violence?" - is unjustified. However, it is justified to demand - after eight years of Qassam rockets...