7-year-old struggles to balance sports and faith

When 7-year-old Amalya Knapp took the beam at the New Jersey state gymnastics finals last month, her excellent performance symbolized a far more complicated balancing act. Although she would have ranked fifth in her age group, eligible for a medal, her individual scores were discounted. She was unable to compete on a Saturday because of her Orthodox Jewish family's observance of the Sabbath. I was upset," Amalya said, "but my mother told me there are decisions you have to make." USA Gymnastics made an effort to accommodate her and let her compete the next day, Sunday, Feb. 13, and permitted her scores to factor into her team's overall rankings. But the national governing body held that because she had not competed at the same time as girls of her skill level and age group, her scores: 9.7 on vault, 9.575 floor, 9.5 beam and 8.75 bars - would not count toward individual medals or rankings. continue

Teenagers, Friends and Bad Decisions.

Why do otherwise good kids seem to make bad decisions when they are with their friends? New research on risk taking and the teenage brain offers some answers.

In studies at Temple University, psychologists used functional magnetic resonance imaging scans on 40 teenagers and adults to determine if there are differences in brain activity when adolescents are alone versus with their friends. The findings suggest that teenage peer pressure has a distinct effect on brain signals involving risk and reward, helping to explain why young people are more likely to misbehave and take risks when their friends are watching. Continue reading...

Winning a basketball game is a Kiddush Hashem?

From the school's principal letter:

"Click here to read an article in the Houston Chronicle about our Boys Basketball team. Aside from being pumped that our team was strong enough to be featured in the Chronicle sports section, and excited about the prospect of competing for a state championship, I am beyond proud of the Kiddush Hashem (sanctifying of God's name - a term often used to indicate when outwardly Jewish people or organizations get positive PR) that our players are making by being an outwardly Jewish team that is competing at the highest level in high school sports in a league of same-sized schools."

My comment:

Since when has positive PR for "outwardly" Jewish people and organizations merited the Kiddush Hashem status? Do we assume that negative PR is a Hillul Hashem? How is it even possible to link a mere win in the basketball tournament to a sanctified idea of Kiddush Hashem? To attempt to do it is to belittle and undermine the serious efforts by Jews in history to sanctify the name of Hashem - in learning, observance, improvement of character traits, endless hardships and persecutions.

Rambam's Point of View:

Kiddush Hashem is when a Jew does the right act, regardless of how much negative publicity this generates. Joseph, who did the right thing by not succumbing to Potiphar's wife, created the greatest possible Kiddush Hashem, according to the Rambam (as explained by Rabbi Chaim Dov Altusky of Torah Ore), even though he was besmirched in the mass media of the time and went to prison for that.

Gilgulei Neshamot gloss:

Yosef was in the end married to Zuleika (Potiphar's wife) when he was reincarnated as Yehoshua and she as Rahav. In Rumi's "Women of Memphis" this happens during Yusuf's lifetime - poetic freedom.

Math That Moves: Schools Embrace the iPad

....“There is very little evidence that kids learn more, faster or better by using these machines,” said Larry Cuban, a professor emeritus of education at Stanford University, who believes that the money would be better spent to recruit, train and retain teachers. “IPads are marvelous tools to engage kids, but then the novelty wears off and you get into hard-core issues of teaching and learning.” But school leaders say the iPad is not just a cool new toy but rather a powerful and versatile tool with a multitude of applications, including thousands with educational uses. “If there isn’t an app that does something I need, there will be sooner or later,” said Mr. Reiff, who said he now used an application that includes all of Shakespeare’s plays. Educators also laud the iPad’s physical attributes, including its large touch screen (about 9.7 inches) and flat design, which allows students to maintain eye contact with their teachers. And students like its light weight, which offers a relief from the heavy books that weigh down their backpacks...

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New book "Child & Domestic Abuse" by Rabbi Daniel Eidensohn Ph.D

A new book by Dr. Daniel Eidensohn, Child & Domestic Abuse: Torah, Psychological, & Legal Perspectives, displays a balance between thoughtful response and outrage. The first volume contains essays by an assortment of professionals — rabbis, psychologists, social workers, lawyers. Each, in his own way, lashes out at the community’s response to sexual abuse of children and attempts to explain the proper response according to the Torah and/or their professional training and experience.

Dr. Eidensohn writes that we will not change the attitude of our rabbinic leaders by providing Torah sources and arguments, even from someone as respected as R. Moshe Sternbuch, who advised Dr. Eidensohn on the publication and personally reviewed the Synopsis section. The only way to spark change is to dramatically describe victims’ pain. When community leaders recognize the extent of the problem and its effects, they will join the cause. “To the degree that the rabbis and community leaders can be convinced that abused children suffer horrible lifetime wounds, you will discover that the legal objections disappear” (p. 12). The same, I believe, applies to the problem of corrupt and unethical practices. When leaders realize how much this damages the community, how deeply this disrupts the basic functioning of our community, they will respond seriously.

Eidensohn’s first volume provides an interesting contrast to another recent book, Breaking the Silence: Sexual Abuse and the Jewish Community, edited by Dr. David Pelcovitz and David Mandel. This book also contains essays by rabbis, doctors and lawyers, and contains victims’ accounts of abuse and its aftermath. The experts writing in this book are top notch, many of whom are household names in the Orthodox community. They provide statistics, guidelines, and concrete advice. The book is edited and typeset in a much more professional way than Dr. Eideonsohn’s. It is nothing short of a communal guidebook for best practices.

Yet, Dr. Eidensohn’s book is what really makes me want to do something. It inspires the passion that is necessary to change our communal practices. It elicits the appropriate level of outrage. It is a J’accuse against the bumbling efforts of Jews unwilling to make hard choices to save our children, incapable of admitting mistake, and failing to learn from the collapse of the Catholic Church over precisely this issue.

Dr. Eidensohn’s second volume is a remarkable encyclopedia of Jewish sources related to issues of abuse. He collects and translates hundreds of post-talmudic texts, organized by subject or author. In particular, his chapter on wife abuse puts to lie the canard that Judaism allows such treatment. Overall, this book is an indispensable guide to the halakhic sources on abuse. (link)

Another review

on Amazon

Untangling the Myths About Attention Disorder

But A.D.H.D. is not a metaphor. It is not the restlessness and rambunctiousness that happen when grade-schoolers are deprived of recess, or the distraction of socially minded teenagers in the smartphone era. Nor is it the reason your colleagues check their e-mail in meetings and even (spare me!) conversations.

“Attention is a really complex cognitive phenomenon that has a lot of pieces in it,” said Dr. David K. Urion of Harvard, who directs the learning disabilities and behavioral neurology program at Boston Children’s Hospital. “What we’re specifically talking about in kids with attention deficit is a problem compared to age- and gender-based peers in selective attention — what do you glom onto and what do you ignore?” full article

As Bullies Go Digital, Parents Play Catch-Up

Last April in an omnibus review of studies addressing youth, privacy and reputation, a report by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard noted that parents who checked their children’s online communications were seen as “controlling, invasive and ‘clueless.’ ” Young people, one study noted, had a notion of an online public viewership “that excludes the family.” A recent study of teenagers and phones by the Pew Research Center Internet and American Life Project said that parents regard their children’s phones as a “parenting tool.” About two-thirds said they checked the content of their children’s phones (whether teenagers pre-emptively delete texts is a different matter). Two-thirds of the parents said they took away phones as punishment. Almost half said they used phones to check on their child’s whereabouts. full article