News Roundup – Wed. 1/20

It’s Rosa Parks and the Freedom Rides all over again. Women in Israel are finally standing up and saying no to the forced segregation. A new hotline has been set up for women to report abuse on public buses, and the founders are promising “never before attempted means” to battle discrimination in the ultra-Orthodox sector. A lot of fun, this is going to be. I should move to Jerusalem and get in on some of it.

Another day in Orthodox Brooklyn, another man accused of sexually abusing children. Emanuel Yegutkin, a high school principal, former volunteer medic for the Flabush Hatzoloh, and former lifeguard at Oorah summer camp, has been accused of forcing a 17-year-old into lewd sex acts from the age of 7 to 14 and subjecting another boy to five years of fondling, beginning when the teen was 12, police said.

Never at a loss for targets, members of the Edah Charedis in Jerusalem are now setting their sites on ten retail establishments that are open on Shabbos, after the protests against Intel and the Karta parking lot have died down. But in a rare show of willingness for dialogue, activists are first seeking to sit down and discuss the matter before calling for boycotts and demonstrations.

The Vatican and the Israeli Chief Rabbinate have the solution for an “environmental crisis” brought on by the exploitation of technology. And the solution lies in “faith.” The exact nature of this “crisis” is still unclear. But whatever it is, faith is of course the answer. Faith is always the answer.

Being religious in the twenty-first century in getting to be a virtual picnic. Headaches on Yom Kippur? No problem, there’s now a drug for it. Etoricoxib, a drug similar to Vioxx, which was pulled from U.S. markets because of the risks of heart attacks and other serious complications, is now being marketed to Orthodox Jews to help relieve headaches from Yom Kippur fasting.