I just heard about this story when I read this post. That really is horrible. There should never be any special treatment because someone comes from a Hareidi community. I always have said that when it comes to the religious they need to be even more lawful and good. Otherwise it flies in the face of being “religious.”
The Jewish community there should be trying to figure out how to better prepare young parents for the hardships of parenting and life, not excusing it.
This is a horrible story, just tragic.

Sick to the bone.
The more i hear these stories the more i lose hope in just about everything.
I just cant take it!
I sit in class and learn all these lovely ethics etc etc But this? Just killed it all.
Where is the good in this world then?

It is no accident this tragedy occurred when it did. The Haredim have a point, and are alluding to a real source of frustration with there charge of “blood libel”, which is that in the Zionist Enitity, there are unfortunately very few Christian children to help them prepare properly for Pesach.

Fine, sorry.

>at least amalek or egytian firstborn. but you trivialize my point.
Because you had none. Which Orthodox bloggers aren’t troubled by a father who kills his infant? Me? Gil Student? Cross Currents (never thought I’d associate my blog with that one)?
I don’t know which Orthdox bloggers you had in mind, but you’ve got to be kidding if you think that this story isn’t as troubling to Orthodox bloggers as it is to you. I can promise you that I’m at least half as concerned about babies as you are (yes, that was sarcasm).
Since you’re a blogger, you know that blogs have themes. In addition, people chose what to blog about, but omission isn’t necessarily indicative of some callous point of view.

I don’t know why you should be hard on them because I don’t know why you should expect anything different from people who still live in the shtetl and the 17th century Poland and not 21st century Medinat (and I say MEDINAT and not ERETZ intentially) Yisrael. They are still living in Galut (exile) even while living in Yerushaleym (although in some ways, maybe Tel Aviv is holier than Jerusalem)
I don’t expect much from them because I don’t see them as the true representatives of authentic halakhic Jewry. I see Eliezer Berkovits, Shira Hadasha, Pardes, Simchat Shlomo, Yakar, and, as much as I often disagree with you Mobius, yes, even you, etc. as true halakhic Judaism that is working to maintain halakha and build it for 21st century Jewish life.
See my latest blog post for an inspiring (?)/sad (?)/amazing (?) post from Eliezer Berkovits on Halakha in Exile. http://amechad.blogspot.com/2006/04/berkovitz-on-halakha-in-galut-vs.html

To quote Rabbi Twersky, who is well versed in child abuse and has written many books, in the case of domestic violence, silence=death, just like with AIDS in the old days.
The more quiet the Orthodox community is about this, and whoever asked for the statistics–in the US is 30% + in the charedi community. Stats come from studies done by welfare agencies in NYC–OHEL told me they got a better handle on the problem once they went public. Teachers were told they were mandatory reporters–that this was a crime. Punishable by LAW>no exemptions…things began changing here over the last ten years.
Israel is about 15 years behind the states, the rates are higher cause of the culture, the post traumatic stress. the numbers in Israel for domestic violence are astronomical. Check with Miklat in Jerusalem. I did.
They Orthos don’t talk about it because my dears, they are STILL in denial. Iss past nisht tzi reden fin die zachin. And as long as they allow the batters and beaters to get kebudim in shul, as long as mikvah ladies don’t report to the rabbis. As long as rebbeim continue to hit the kids, or worse and get away with it–and they DO…then don’t expect much from the frum community, esp. in Israel. In America, there’s some headway. In Israel, reform is in the Neanderthal stages.
I could write a book, and have. The Shalom Bayis Handbook, a compilation of info for pulpit rabbis. Now other people do that stuff…I think.
So stop picking on Mobius here, because he’s correct. He watched me fight the war, watched our family’s life get threatened on AOL in the good old days–some whack crazy frum lady threatened to kill me, him, and the others in my family because I said there was domestic violence in the Jewish community.
I still have all my anecdotes, dead and/or divorced girl friends and acquaintances. etc. as testimony….so deal with the reality.
They are supposed to discuss it, blog it to death and damn well fix…but they sweep it under the rug until it’s too late. We have a current case like this in Passaic. Was in the papers last week. Kid B’H isn’t dead. “just” twisted and broken limbs.
Liberate the abused Jewish children in the community. And you know who they are. You can see them running wild in the streets of Jtown, spitting on strangers, calling people names, mocking those who walk along the street. They learned it from their parents, and they’ve taken beatings.

First, let me point out that in your rant you’ve managed to accuse everyone in a disparate and widely varied group of being responsible for the actions of one community, where most of the people of that group are probably unaware that anything even happened.
Let me clue you in on a little secret JewSchool. What the Religious Jews in Meah Shearim do has little to nothing to do with the Jews in Netanya, or in NYC, or in the Golan, etc. I know that being a progressive and broad minded fellow you may have a hard time understanding such a thing, but believe it or not there is no secret conspiracy, and we religious Jews do not have secret decoder rings with which we figure out our marching orders from the Hidden Grand Poobahs on the Sanhederin.
As for Orthodox Bloggers putting this up and decrying it. Maybe most of them had the good sense to realize that:
a) they don’t know the whole story and real human beings (as opposed to rant material for a hate filled bigot), are at stake here
b) they don’t make it their business to comment on crime from the get go. That is, they never comment about this sort of thing whether it’s done by religious or non religious people
c) they kind of realize that if you want to compare religious to non religious abuse, there’s probably a hell of a lot more that just gets shrugged at from the non religious side.
Furthermore, just because someone is wearing a black hat, does not mean he is from the Breslover Chasidim, or the Gerrer, or the Lithuanian yeshivot, or from Lubavitch, or from Stamar, etc. You see Jewschool, that sort of thinking, ie, “they all have black skin so the must all think alike” went out of fashion with the Klan and the Dodo.
Secondly, a little shocking thing you may not realize is, that, despite having an impeccable source for your near-certain information, sometimes what is written in the paper is NOT what actually happens in real life.
Were you there? Did you see the beating? Is there a video? Do you have witnesses? Do you know the psychological state of mind of the father? Do you have proof that it was the father to begin with? Are you sure this wasn’t an accident?
Oh wait, I know, it was a haredi, and everyone knows that haredis beat their wives and children. Just like everyone knows that blacks mug and kill people, or that everyone knows that all arabs are terrorists.
What is most amusing about all this is that at the bottom of this comment submission I am looking at a picture of the Chofetz Chaim. Somehow, I don’t think that what you are ranting about is incontrovertible fact. In fact, I suspect, given how quick you were to paint every religious Jew with your biased brush, and how even quicker you were to assume the worst, that maybe, just maybe, treppenowitz was right on the money when he de-linked you.
Just a thought.
I hope that at least one of the commenters on this site who smugly decided to go along with you and insult and dehumanize a group of people he never met, takes the time to realize that the world is just a teeny weeny bit bigger than the narrow prejudices he’s been raised with.
-ron

This baby’s life had value. In Israel, young women who are religious and abused do not know where to turn. The tasks of providing adequate shelter and counsling is difficult. Yes, there are only 2 shelters in Jerusalem that provide shelter and legal aid to the victims of domestic violence. Yes, the advisory board is made up of Rabbis that care. The Miklat Shelters are full. The money they raise is not nearly enough to keep them going. It’s not that the orthodox community is silent, they voice their outrage by making contributions to places that can help these women get their lives back on track. The Milkat Shelter in Jerusalem needs your help. You can blog about the unjust conditions but do something about it aswell.

>“whoever has the ability to protest against the members of his household but does not protest is punished for the members of his household; against the people of his town, is punished for the people of his town; against the entire world, is punished for the entire world.”
If you misapply this Gemara, as you do, then you would obviously require every blogger to totally tranform the character of their blogs in accordance with this rule.