Israeli police are investigating Rabbi Efraim Tessler, father of Deputy Culture Minister Yaakov Tessler and former head of a Jerusalem yeshiva, on suspicion of rape and sexual offenses against students.
The investigation follows a January Haaretz report detailing the sexual abuse suffered by high school-aged students at Damesek Eliezer Yeshiva of the Vishnitz Hasidic community.
Yaakov Tessler, the deputy minister and the rabbi’s son, has not been summoned for questioning or as a witness by the police, even though he was involved in the agreement to exchange 100,000 shekels for a victim’s silence.
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Tag: religion
Disabled Reverend Mother Superior at Texas Carmelite convent sues ‘pure evil’ local bishop for $1M ‘after he interrogated her while she was high on fentanyl post-surgery and got her to admit to SEX with a priest’
The physically disabled prioress of a Catholic convent in Texas has filed a $1 million lawsuit against a ‘pure evil’ bishop accused of tricking her into sex [admitting] with a priest while she was high on fentanyl while recovering from surgery.
Reverend Mother Superior Teresa Agnes Gerlach, who leads the Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity in Arlington, filed the bombshell suit against Bishop Michael Olson in Tarrant County Court.
The suit alleges that in April, Olson burst into the Carmelite convent, where the nuns spend most of their day in devotion and silent prayer, confiscating their cell phones and ‘interrogating’ Gerlach about her alleged sexual affair with an unnamed priest.
Gerlach, who has serious heath issues and uses a wheelchair, said that Olson even grilled her on the matter immediately after a surgical procedure that required general anesthesia, while she was still under the influence of fentanyl. The diocese says she admitted to breaking her vow of chastity, which forbids Catholic clergy from having sex.
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The first paragraph above seems to have left out the word admitting, which I added. I may look into this further because it is quite weird. I personally have a lot of respect for Carmelite nuns. If anyone has relevant info, please post in comments or send it in by email. ABN
UPDATE: The article below has more information and clears up the sexual allegation with a clear denial: Carmelite Nuns Sue Fort Worth Bishop Over ‘Grave Misconduct’ in Investigation of Mother Superior.
Although the diocese alleges that Mother Teresa Agnes admitted to violations of the Sixth Commandment, her attorney Matthew Bobo said in a statement provided to CNA that she was “under heavy medication from a procedure” and does not recall what she admitted.
“They are making it sound like she had some sexual liaison affair with another priest and that did not happen,” Bobo said.
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What people fear most about AI proves Buddhism
What people fear most about AI is: 1) it will lie to us and 2) it will tell us the truth.
The most basic teaching of all Buddhas is: Don’t do bad. Do good always. Purify your mind.
This is worth thinking about deeply because AI has revealed a profound philosophical consilience with Buddhism and Buddhist practice.
If more of us were Buddhists more of us would be prepared for the next stage of AI and human morality/ethics. ABN
There is deep meaning underlying this cartoon. The metacognition of intense identities and ecstatic politics, psycholinguistically, resides in the mind at the same place as religion. All religions are metacognitive categories or top-level rules for the cognitive categories that lie below them—values, intentions, behaviors, etc. Religious anything does not have to be rooted in something from the deep past though most of the traditions we have from the deep past have much to offer. Religion is a way to understand the world and align yourself with it. An important basis of religion is morality. A religion with weak, contradictory, or even absurd, morality must be abandoned or improved. Buddhism is a good religion because it has a strong moral foundation, an excellent philosophy, an accurate description of the human condition, and it is dynamic and open to new information. Putting religious weight on transient identities or political causes is a bad idea because it replaces your best metacognitive categories with lower thoughts. ABN
Young Americans turn to religion in post-covid era
The story of religious trends in America has been one of increasing disaffiliation among younger generations. But a new study reveals an unexpected resurgence of faith among youngsters in a post-Covid era.
Some young adults had an awakening during Covid as the entire world crumbled around them. They were in search of a higher power to get through the government-forced lockdowns and controlled demolition of the economy, as well as watching loved ones and friends contract Covid-19 that some federal government agencies believe leaked from a Chinese lab.
As reported by the Wall Street Journal, a new study commissioned by Springtide Research Institute found about one-third of 18-to-25-year-olds believe in a higher power, up from one-quarter in 2021. The findings were based on polling data from December.
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The essence of religion is insight. The rest is mainly vocabulary. ABN
Kenya starvation cult death toll hits 90 as morgues fill up: ‘Nothing prepares you for shallow mass graves of children’
The death toll from a suspected Kenyan starvation cult climbed to 90 on Tuesday, including many children, as police said investigators were pausing the search for bodies because the morgues were full.
The discovery of mass graves in Shakahola forest near the coastal town of Malindi has shocked Kenyans, with cult leader Paul Mackenzie Nthenge accused of driving his followers to death by preaching that starvation was the only path to God.
There are fears more corpses could be found as search teams unearthed 17 bodies on Tuesday, with investigators saying children made up the majority of victims of what has been dubbed the “Shakahola Forest Massacre.”
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The true significance of the lamb in Judaism — Rabbi Tovia Singer
Eva Vlaardingerbroek converts to Catholicism
AMSTERDAM — Eva Vlaardingerbroek, a popular Dutch legal philosopher and political commentator who has become well-known in recent years for her criticism of increasingly prominent social ideologies in contemporary Western society, will be received into the Catholic Church along with her father on Sunday.
Born to a Catholic mother and Protestant father, Vlaardingerbroek, 26, was brought up a Christian, but it was the COVID-19 pandemic that fully awakened her to the reality of the spiritual battle the world is facing, and a realization that the Catholic faith is “the most powerful weapon” against the moral relativism of today.
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Linked article contains interview with Eva about her conversion. ABN
GPT-4 illustrates the human soul
The agenda of Paul
James Lindsay on planned AI gnosis
California Church ordered to pay $1.2 million fine for not masking during services
Calvary Chapel in San Jose, Calif., is a large evangelical church that defied state and local orders to mask up during services and maintain “social distancing.” Of course, we now know that mask-wearing was about as effective against spreading COVID-19 as wearing a necklace of newt entrails and “social distancing” was a bad joke.
But it’s not the science. It’s that the church defied authorities. So now Calvary must pay the state of California $1.2 million in fines because they got bureaucrats mad at them.
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Psychedelic-induced mystical experiences: An interdisciplinary discussion and critique
Contemporary research on serotonergic psychedelic compounds has been rife with references to so-called ‘mystical’ subjective effects. Several psychometric assessments have been used to assess such effects, and clinical studies have found quantitative associations between ‘mystical experiences’ and positive mental health outcomes. The nascent study of psychedelic-induced mystical experiences, however, has only minimally intersected with relevant contemporary scholarship from disciplines within the social sciences and humanities, such as religious studies and anthropology. Viewed from the perspective of these disciplines—which feature rich historical and cultural literatures on mysticism, religion, and related topics—‘mysticism’ as used in psychedelic research is fraught with limitations and intrinsic biases that are seldom acknowledged. Most notably, existing operationalizations of mystical experiences in psychedelic science fail to historicize the concept and therefore fail to acknowledge its perennialist and specifically Christian bias. Here, we trace the historical genesis of the mystical in psychedelic research in order to illuminate such biases, and also offer suggestions toward more nuanced and culturally-sensitive operationalizations of this phenomenon. In addition, we argue for the value of, and outline, complementary ‘non-mystical’ approaches to understanding putative mystical-type phenomena that may help facilitate empirical investigation and create linkages to existing neuro-psychological constructs. It is our hope that the present paper helps build interdisciplinary bridges that motivate fruitful paths toward stronger theoretical and empirical approaches in the study of psychedelic-induced mystical experiences.
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I have not yet read this paper but am posting it anyway because psychedelics are interesting in and of themselves and also in relation to Buddhist history and religious practice worldwide. From what I know about psychedelics, they can be very helpful to some people used the right way at the right time. I honestly do not want to encourage the use of any drugs, including many prescribed drugs and OTC ‘pain-killers’ (some are brain killers, imo), but also believe that there is abundant evidence that psychedelics have affected most religious traditions beneficially, including Buddhism. From a Buddhist point of view I wonder Are We Misunderstanding the Fifth Precept? For the record, I do not use any drugs at all except caffeine and a very occasional micro-dose of homegrown organic tobacco under the tongue for maybe 30 seconds. ABN
Dalai Lama, 87, was only showing his ‘innocent grandfatherly affectionate demeanor’ in video where he asked a young boy to ‘suck my tongue’, insists head of Tibet’s exiled government
The video is self-explanatory. I don’t see anything bad about it, just looks weird after crossing cultural lines. Displaying the tongue is a Tibetan greeting. My understanding is there was a mistranslation—the boy wanted to hug the Dalai Lama but the DL was told he wanted a kiss. The other point to remember is China’s CCP constantly attacks the DL and has been doing so for decades. They do it because they know that historically revolutions in China often centered around a revered religious figure. Falun Gong is repressed for this same reason and no other. There is an OK article on the incident at the source link above. ABN
UPDATE: Here is a better interpretation of this event sent by a reader:
As for the Dalai Lama kerfuffle, according to my Tibetan, there was zero issue with the translation and DL was definitely not told that the boy wanted a kiss. (As an interpreter, I sometimes got blamed for relational/karmic stuff that really wasn’t my error, so I’m sensitive to this issue.)
For some reason, the DL was not understanding the common Tibetan term ‘tham (hug) being spoken by the interpreter to his left but he finally understood the English term “hug” (spoken with gesture) by the man on his right.
A Russian ex-monk/interpreter in the Tibetan tradition said that Tibetan grandparents have this thing they say to tease young kids: nga’i.lce.las.’jib. It translates as, “Suck my tongue.” or “Suckle from my tongue.” The idea is just to gross the kids out and get them to recoil in disgust.
I never witnessed this in my years in the Tibetan scene because I never spent time with lay families and this sort of thing never came up in the monastic setting I was in. But it sounds entirely plausible, as Tibetans tease everyone hard from an early age. Anyway, this was definitely not the wordless tongue-as-greeting Tibetan thing. In my experience, that is usually something fleeting and the tongue isn’t stuck very far out.
That said, I still find it odd that the DL, as someone who has been on the world stage for decades, decided to go with a direct translation of this. Like, was there seriously not any inner voice saying, “Um, maybe this one won’t translate well. Maybe don’t go there . . . “?
I’m definitely no Tibetan Buddhist or DL apologist. The dysfunction in that system is extreme. But IMO, the last thing people need right now is to lose whatever modicum of faith they have.
American Buddhist Net 