Simanim and the Segulah of Rabi Matya ben Charash - An Update

 

  

As Rosh Hashanah and the Yamim Noraim approach, we run to the stores to buy apples and honey, dates, raisins, pomegranates, squash, carrots, leek, black-eyed peas, fish heads and beet leaves.

Maybe not all of us, but many of us.

Why?

Well, these are the traditional “simanim”, or signs, through which we hope to inspire a sweet and successful upcoming year. These go into the realm of what we call “segulos” (omens).

The strange thing is that we are not supposed to acknowledge omens. The Torah tells us תמים תהיה עם ה' אלקיך. One should be unassuming in regard to HKBH. So why is there such a big hullabaloo about these simanim? Do they really work?

And the answer is No, the simanim by themselves don’t work at all. But…before we stuff the apple with honey or the date or pomegranate into our mouths (or after, doesn’t matter) we say a little prayer that says Yehi Ratzon – may it be Your will – that the events of the coming year should be sweet and productive, etc. Rosh Hashanah is a big eiss ratzon, time of favor. So, even small tefillos like this can make a difference.

So, if it’s the prayer that helps and not the apple with honey, what do we need them for?

We really don’t. But they inspire us to say these brief prayers. Also, we have a bit of fun with them.

This is really the story with everything that we consider a segulah anytime of the year. They are meant to be carried out along with some tefillos and tzedaka. And it is meant to bring us closer to HKBH, which is teshuva. So, if there is tefillah and teshuva and tzedaka, this is indeed an effective segulah for all good things.

In addition to this, we do have a belief that the merits of tzaddikim give us a boost. It is not in place of the tefilla and teshuva and tzedakah but in conjunction with them. Whenever we daven, we try to invoke the zechus of our fathers Avraham, Yitzchok and Yaakov. Specifically on Rosh Hashanah, we clasp onto the zechus of Avraham and Yitzchok for their mesiras nefesh at the akaida.

From here we learn that any tzaddik (or even simple Jew) who endured an episode of mesiras nefesh or Kiddush Hashem can add his zechus to our tefillos. This is why we go to the kevarim of tzadikim, so that their merits can help our tefillos. Or we go to a live tzaddik or mekubal or Admor and give him a pidyon to daven for us.

Thus, on the one hand there certainly is value to the simanim of Rosh Hashanah, to go to kivrei tzadikim and to living ones. But, on the other hand, there are no guarantees whatsoever and, at the end of the day, or the end of the year, or the end of Yom Tov, it all boils down to what HKBH thinks is best for us.

As such, it is hard to ever know if a segulah or even an actual tefillah was effective. It’s a lot like adding bleach to your white load to get it snowy white. If it comes out as white as you want, you can’t really know if it wouldn’t be just as white without the bleach. If it isn’t so white, you can’t tell if without the bleach it would have been worse.

Another thing is that rarely do we get as much as we hoped for. For sure, whenever we daven and implement segulos for things like health, parnassa or another form of yeshuah, we always prefer to merit a geulah sheleima. This means a resolution that eradicates our problem once and for all. Rarely do we a get a “response” that is so resolute. Very often we get only a partial yeshuah. Things are better than they were but not as rosy as we want them to be.

What would life be without its challenges?

For me personally, parnassah is always a challenge. This is while being blessed with a very large family and very limited earning opportunities once I came to Eretz Yisroel and had to abandon the diamond business. Two years ago, I was thrilled to marry off two daughters within five months of each other and this past year I married off two sons in even less time. It’s very taxing but, praised be HKBH, I got past it.

But I had some unexpected (or should I say, unwanted) challenges as well. Specifically, it is the defamation case that I wrote about six months ago. This was my original post about the segulah of Rabi Matya ben Charash. I wrote there that the efforts of a very biased judge and a very unscrupulous lawyer resulted in a malicious judgement which amounted to close to $100,000 US dollars. I wrote that I successfully launched an appeal and that, at the time, the appeal was pending. I would update my readers after it was fully resolved.

I later wrote that I implemented the segulah of Rabi Matya ben Charash a second time on behalf of Malka Leifer as the jury was deliberating the verdict in her case.

As is a “condition” of the segulah, it is my duty to discuss the positive results.

In both cases, I did not enjoy the geulah sheleima that I was hoping for. I suppose that it is fair to say that a geulah sheleima is too much  למעלה מן הטבע to be considered practical. Yet, in both cases there was a substantial yeshuah for each of us, respectively, that indicates that our tefillos were not ignored.

Firstly, in my defamation case.

The judges scheduled a hearing for oral arguments about mid-April. The lead judge claimed that they read all the material and then asked us if we have anything to add to our petition. My lawyer said a few points and the other lawyer said a few points and I said a few points. Then, the lead judge said that he doesn’t think I should be released from liability, and he sort of reiterated some of the bias of the initial judge. Yet, he said, that the judgement was exorbitant and exaggerated. So how about cutting it in half (just about) as a court suggested settlement?

We adjourned for a recess to allow me to mull over the “suggestion”.

I thought there are no grounds for liability and that even half is exorbitant and exaggerated. However, my lawyer said to me that the extreme exaggerated nature of the judgement makes it very difficult for an appeals judge to go to the other extreme. It’s not worth forcing the judges into deliberation to try to get a better outcome.

So, I took my lawyer’s advice and agreed to the settlement. I believe this means that the case is now deemed to be a settlement of the sides and it totally nullifies the original ruling. As such, the few thousand additional shekels that the original judge awarded to Meyer Seewald were wiped out. JCW came away with almost nothing (there was some expense money that was not nullified.) One more thing, as part of the settlement, their lawyer made me agree to remove the content of the posts that they singled out in their suit.

The Sapper sisters who are being portrayed as the poor victims got collectively NIS 150,000 to be paid out over time. I assume that most of this money is going to their lawyer. Either way, I equate their demeanor to that of Roye Ron in Ron vs. Versano. They did it for money and censorship. And they had to misrepresent my words, invent and distort “facts”, and pull other shtick to do it.* Just like the Ron vs. Versano case, the money they are taking is not kosher money.

I am not taking all this sitting down. Now that I can claim a concrete monetary loss, it is much more feasible than it was earlier to bring some of the offending parties to a Din Torah. I am currently pursuing that route to reclaim some or all of these losses.

This is not where I really wanted to be, but it is a lot better than where I was when the malicious judgement first came out last October. It is definitely a yeshuah. Can I credit the segulah of Rabi Matya ben Charash? Like the bleach in the white wash, I will never know. But it certainly did not do me any harm.

So much for me. What about Mrs. Leifer?

I undertook the segulah for her shortly before the verdict was announced. Of course, I was hoping for a full acquittal, and this did not come to be. Still, out of 90 potential counts, she was only tried for 29 and only convicted for 18. Of these, she was totally acquitted for all counts involving the oldest sister, Nicole. I wrote all about my impressions of the verdict right HERE.

But the verdict is only half the story. The main point is what kind of a sentence did she get?

One thing is certain. The Sapper sisters were not content merely to obtain a guilty verdict to show the world how much Mrs. Leifer is really the evil person they made her out to be. Nor were they content with the monetary compensation they got from illegitimate lawsuits against the school and Mrs. Leifer. They wanted as long a sentence as they could possibly get.

This is evidenced by the pre-sentencing plea hearing that was held on June 28, 2023 in which the accusers were permitted to expound how much Mrs. Leifer ruined their lives. Thus, what they were after was punishment for allegedly ruining their lives, not any kind of compensation as our Torah dictates. This constitutes nekama plain and simple.

The good thing is that Nicole Meyer wasn’t allowed to present at that hearing since all of the charges that pertained to her were dropped. Of course, Elly Sapper was, even though she is the one who voluntarily made herself available to Mrs. Leifer. She clearly intimated that her anguish about this case – which did not have to take place – is responsible for her miscarrying her child.

Perhaps. But one thing we know is that ever since the rollout of the Covid vaccinations, there has been a startling increase in the percentages of miscarriages in Australia and throughout the world. (See HERE and HERE.) Virtually all Australians are vaccinated.

On that note, and with all things considered, I expected to hear a very harsh sentence being pronounced.

The sentence was delivered on August 24, 2023, as the winds of Elul were blowing. Much to my [pleasant] surprise, the sentence was much milder than I anticipated. For all of the 18 counts, Mrs. Leifer was sentenced to 15 years in prison. She is to be eligible for parole after 11.5 of those.

The reports say the Judge Gamble “took into account” 5.6 years that she has been held in pre-trial detention and house arrest in Israel and in Australia. I am not sure if this means that this time is deducted from the 15 years or not, but I think it is. The reports are saying that this means she is eligible for parole in less than six years, so it implies that her total net sentence is only 8.4 years. Also, if I understood the Israeli extradition law properly, the Medinah can only extradite a citizen on condition that jail time be served here in Israel.

Thus, unless I am making some mistake, the result of this entire fiasco as of now is 8.4 years of incarceration here in Israel with eligibility for parole in less than six years.

This is definitely a tremendous yeshuah even though it falls short of the geulah sheleima that we hope for. Did the segulah of Rabi Matya ben Charash play any role?

We’ll never know. But I would say that the simanim that we eat on Rosh Hashanah and the brief tefillos that go along with them are nothing to be scorned.

As for the Sapper sisters, it doesn’t look to me like they got any geulah sheleima either. Yet, they all went on camera looking ecstatic and jubilant because they managed to get a Jewish woman sentenced to jail time even though there is nothing in our Halacha that condones such a thing under any conditions. I believe it constitutes gonev nefesh m’Yisrael. But, I suppose, a small nekama is better than no nekama.

All three sisters talk about “healing”. Dassi Erlich says, “This marks the end of this chapter in our lives and opens the chapter on our healing.” Nicole says, “We will start healing.” But Elie Sapper says it best, “The more time and distance we create we move further away from this trauma, the more ability we have to start healing.”

I hope they are right. I sincerely wish them all a refuah sheleima. But if they really wanted to heal, they should have created time and distance since 2008. Instead, they actively pursued this episode for over 15 years and, in my opinion, they inflicted a lot of damage along the way. I mentioned some of it in my previous posts. It includes Halachically illegitimate money they have squeezed out of the Adass school and out of me and who knows who else. It includes all the iniquities of mesira and gonev nefesh and, worst of all, the great Chillul Hashem.

Dassi Erlich is still pursuing “justice” against the Adass school officials for allowing Mrs. Leifer to leave Australia back in 2008. Currently, she submitted a manuscript of her autobiography to a publisher. The main goal of this autobiography is to demonize the Adass community. It says so right on the subtitle of the proposed cover.

Whether everything she writes is true or not, I cannot see the toelles of such a book (aside from more money). From my experiences in my defamation case, it is hard to say that they really care about the truth.* I am not convinced this book is being written in good faith.

*[One of the most amazing things about their televised statement was when Nicole Meyer openly stated (2:48), "Female perpetrators are under-reported and we had nothing to base it on." I wrote exactly this in some of my posts and the Sapper sisters actually accused me in their lawsuit of "lying" when I wrote that they had nothing to base it on. And here is Nicole Meyer admitting it openly in front of millions of viewers!]

All said, none of the above is a recipe for healing. There is a lot of teshuva that must be done and until it is, it is not possible to heal.

The apples and honey, dates, pomegranates, squash, fish heads and everything else are meant to awaken us that we want a happy and successful year. But we know that we really need to earn it through tefillah, tzedakah and teshuva. Without these things the zechus of our fathers and tzadikim such as Rabi Matya ben Charash will not help us, either.  

We don’t want partial geulos. We yearn for the geula sheleima. May it come speedily in our time. And also for a refuah sheleima - a complete healing. But we all have our work cut out for us.

תכיל שנה וקללותיה – תחל שנה וברכותיה.

 

שנה טובה ומבורכת וכתיבה וחתימה טובה לכולם!

Judging the Judges - Part 5: Disorder in the Court ( Repost from December 2008)

 

The Yom HaDin is speedily approaching when we will all pass before the True Judge who judges with justice and mercy. I am sure it is difficult for many of us to fathom the justice and mercy of His judgement because we certainly don't see much of it happening down here in our world.

The following is a repost of the main body of a post on the Israeli "judicial" system that I wrote way back in December of 2008 in response to the Valis incident. I initially thought to merely link to it as reference material for the subject matter which I plan to write concerning my current experiences in court. However, after reading it through, I realized that it is way too relevant and descriptive to be used as a mere reference. It needs to be reinstated as it's own installment in this series.

In a nutshell, Yisrael Valis was a chareidi avreich who brought his baby son into Hadassah Hospital with severe injuries in the middle of the night. The hospital took the baby and claimed to treat him, but by morning the baby was pronounced dead. Hospital personnel claimed the baby had been abused. Mr. Valis claimed the baby fell when he was holding him and he fell asleep. The strange thing was that the hospital could not fully account for what transpired over eight hours of "treatment".  

Eventually, Mr. Valis was charged with murder despite no real proof of what really took place. At the opening of the trial, the judge astutely said that there is no way he can be charged with murder under the circumstances. But, if they want to adjourn and reintroduce it as manslaughter, they can do so. The case was adjourned for six months and then resumed with a manslaughter charge. The trial was presided by a single female judge. No jury or panel. 

Very much like the Leifer case, it was impossible to prove even if a crime was committed. More than the Leifer case, even if there was a crime, it could not be proven who is the criminal since the hospital also had what to answer for. Regardless, the judge ruled for manslaughter and sentenced Valis to six years in prison. This ruling was not based on any proven facts, since no incriminating facts were proven, but rather on the feelings and impressions of the sole female judge.

A rival blogger, Harry Maryles of Emes V'Emunah, wrote why he thought the verdict was fair. I disagreed contending the issue is not whether the verdict was fair but whether the trial and judicial process was fair. Once it is clear that they definitely were not, there is no way to defend the verdict even if, in truth, Mr. Valis was a heartless killer.

The original post was published on Dec. 8, 2008 and can be seen HERE. I shaved off some irrelevant opening and closing paragraphs. Aside from that, I am reposting it in full. Here it is:

I refer to Harry's post entitled The Valis Verdict (Nov 25, 2008). In this post, Harry muses as to whether the "verdict" (I think he means "sentence") in the Yisrael Valis case can be considered "fair". And, based on what Harry reads in the papers, here are his conclusions:

I’m not convinced that there was any bias at all.

Let us remember that the leniency that is being called for on the part of the Charedi community is for a man who was convicted of killing his son. How lenient should the courts be for that? Six years in prison.

I think that the verdict was probably just.

Harry seems disturbed at what the chareidim think of the Israeli judicial system:

This is how far the secular authorities are not trusted. They are compared to anti Semitic Czarist Russia at its worst!

Harry thinks that the chareidim are making a case out of nothing more than pathos and self-righteousness:

This young fellow, an Avreich, had until then enjoyed an impeccable reputation among his peers and his mentors. He had a bright future ahead of him. He was supposedly a gentle soul who would not hurt a fly. The verdict - it is therefore thought - was biased. It was an opportunity to bash Charedim by a biased Chiloni court.

It is as though they sincerely believe that there can never be a fair verdict. If a religious Jew is arrested for any reason he is always seen as a victim of secular bias.

And then Harry weighs in:

But that simply cannot always be the case.

I beg to differ. I believe that it always is the case (see what I quoted below from the Law in Israel blog). It is not a biased chiloni court as much as it's an immoral chiloni court. What I mean is that it is lacking in moral jurisprudence.

Harry is misrepresenting the situation. The problem is that even though we are not zocheh to a Halachically based criminal system, the Halacha does tell us what moral legal standards are. If the acting court system merely deviates from these morals in some nuance, such as accepting eyewitness testimony from one witness, or a woman, or a non-believer, there are grounds to say that we can't meet every standard. Undoubtedly, it is wishful thinking to expect any Westernized judicial system to adapt the rigid standards of our Halachic system. Nevertheless, there are yet certain legal rudiments which most westernized societies recognize and live up to, but seem to be overlooked by the democratic State of Israel.

Both Halacha and normal Western judicial systems provide legal safeguards to ensure a fair trial. This is what makes a system moral. It follows that a system that is lacking in these or similar safeguards is illegitimate and immoral in its structure without an issue of bias. In other words, it is a faulty system for everybody which allows for unjust manipulation.

There are at least three primary safeguards:

Safeguard 1) Trial by consensus

(Pirkei Avos 4:8) אל תהי דן יחידי, שאין דן יחידי אלא אחד.

Do you know any Western society that decides a homicide case by a single judge?

It doesn't happen in the US, Canada, or Britain. In those places, any felony trial is decided by a jury. Not just a jury, but "a jury of your peers" who are selected jointly by the prosecution and defense. Other countries require a tribunal for homicide or other serious offenses.

Of course, the Halacha is even stricter. By right, nothing is decided by a single judge. It's all right there in the first Mishna of Sanhedrin (1:1).

Monetary cases are judged by a panel of 3 [judges]; thievery and personal injury cases by 3; property damage and punitive damage cases by 3; … judicial flogging by 3, in the name of Rabbi Yishmael it is said with 23; …capital cases with 23; bestiality with 23…

The point is that it seems to be a world-wide standard that serious offenses are not adjudicated by a single person.

There can be numerous logical reasons for this. For one thing, human beings are inherently biased. Every individual hears things his way and sees things his way. Also, they are selective listeners. A point that makes a deep impression on one, may not be the point that makes a deep impression on another. They are also, well, human and can start thinking about what's for dinner in the middle of litigation. When a group of people hear the same thing and deliberate about it, each one points out to the other things he may have missed. Moreover, we never know when somebody may have a secret personal agenda.

Now, here is how it works in Israel (Source: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Politics/judiciary.html) :

Generally, a panel is composed of a single District Court judge. A panel of three judges is established when the court hears an appeal of a Magistrates' Court's judgement, when the accused is charged with an offense punishable by imprisonment of ten or more years, or when the President or Deputy President of the District Court so directs. There are five District Courts in Israel - in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Beersheva, and Nazareth.

This means that only if the sentence can be 10 years or longer does a person have a right to a tribunal. It may be that the 6 + 2 in our case is, in effect, all that a single judge can impose. This also means that as long as we are not putting away the defendant for 10 or more years, a single judge can do it.

No jury, no tribunal, no consensus. Just one judge.

And who appoints these "judges"? Not the people being judged. Not even in an indirect fashion by their parliamentary representatives. And not even in a retroactive indirect fashion such as that the parliamentary representatives must approve the appointments. Just an internal cronyist system.

Immoral.

Safeguard 2) Self-incrimination

In Halacha, there is no such thing a self-incrimination. It is forbidden by the Torah (Sanhedrin 9b, Bava Kama 64b). This means that a confession is not admissible in court under any circumstances. This basically precludes the possibility and advantages of forcing a confession out of anybody and saves us the trouble of having to determine whether a confession is genuine. We can't use it anyway.

In some western countries (not all) there are constitutional rights for the accused. In America, we have the Miranda rights and there is an obligation to inform each person of his rights before even detaining him. The rights are based on the 5th amendment and include that any accused person has the right to remain silent, which means that he does not have to answer his interrogators. He also has the right to legal counsel present at the interrogation. In America, a confession can be used against the accused but he must be told of this up front.

Here in Israel, there is no 5th amendment, nor the right to remain silent. I do not believe that there is a right to have a legal counsel present at the time of interrogation. And since there are no rights to inform the accused, he is not informed of any. Thus, he never knows what rights he may have.

Now, if this standard is a precept for moral jurisprudence in Halacha and, to a lesser degree, in America, then we can safely conclude that the State of israel is not in keeping with these standards of morality.

Safeguard 3) Presumption of innocence

I do not need to elaborate on this one as Rabbi Yaakov Menken so articulately critiqued it in his articles. I quote:

Judge Hannah Ben-Ami decided to convict him of manslaughter (not murder) because it was “reasonable to believe that there was awareness of the possible fatal outcome” of his actions — which stunned legal observers familiar with the meaning of “innocent until proven guilty.”

Do you want to read an amazing fact?

This I found in a blog called Law in Israel blog in an August 8 post entitled: Help! I've Been Arrested under the heading The conviction rate in Israel :

Finally, I have to tell you the bad news: 99.9% of all criminal cases brought before Israeli courts end in convictions (ie a “guilty” verdict). That figure is a real statistical calculation (from 2005) and is not a rough estimate or an exaggeration. It means that cases get decided in the police stations and at the district attorneys’ offices. If the police think you are guilty then so will the courts. If you have persuaded the police you are innocent, then might not prosecute. So, what happens during your interrogation is crucial.

Did you hear that, Harry? 99%!! No, this is not "Czarist Russia at its worst." It is worse than Czarist Russia. Mendel Beillis got a fairer trial than Yisrael Valis. (Beillis was acquitted.)

There are a number of other judicial safeguards to consider such as the public involvement toward judicial appointments that I snuck in in the consensus section. And, another one: we know that by Halachic law no evidence short of eye witness testimony is admissible. Today's advancements in forensic technology (fingerprints, DNA, etc.) can give us some facts that can support or discredit the theories of the prosecution, but no forensics can tell us precisely "what happened"*, and if the whole case hinges on it, then we have a hinge without a door.

That is 5 safeguards and not one of them exists here in the Western democratic State of Israel.

All told, we are dealing with a legal system that does not support regulated judicial appointments, trial by consensus, presumption of innocence, or the proscription of self-incrimination. When you combine this with the total lack of any eyewitness testimony whatsoever (forget about the Torah's standards for witnesses), all that remains is the bias of a single [female] judge. And we just learned that if the police think you're guilty, then so does the judge. Leave the chareidim out of this. There are no rudiments for a fair trial for anybody in such a system. It is an immoral system.

We deserve better.