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statistics

Clergy sexual misconduct: What’s being done to rein in abuse?

Even as the Catholic Church has been rocked by a massive pedophilia scandal in recent years, the Jewish community also has been buffeted by high-profile cases of sexual impropriety involving rabbis and other authority figures.How extensive is the problem of clergy sex abuse in the Jewish community? It depends on which criteria are used as a yardstick.

British theater group Stan’s Cafe uses piles of rice to bring statistics to life

Upon entering the museum, visitors will receive a grain of rice, representing themselves. Then, they will walk into a room filled with 300 million grains of rice – one for every person in the United States. The rice will be divided into piles, each one illustrating a statistic, such as the number of people who have walked on the moon or the millions of immigrants who passed through Ellis Island. One grain of rice will stand for one person.

And there it will be, among all the piles: a large mound with 6 million pieces, representing each individual Jewish life lost in the Holocaust.

Hate Crime Stats Not Always Precise

The Council on American-Islamic Relations\’ (CAIR) new report titled, \”Unpatriotic Acts,\” warns that acts of hate against Muslims in the United States skyrocketed in 2003. At face value, the numbers are grim: CAIR notes a 70 percent increase in \”reports of harassment, violence and discriminatory treatment\” against Muslims in the United States between 2002 (602 acts) and 2003 (1,019 acts). That also represents a 300 percent increase between the years 2000 and 2003.

Those numbers, however, do not entirely speak for themselves. Tracking hate is a complex process; statistics may be influenced by outside variables. That\’s especially true since the CAIR report also includes noncriminal acts of discrimination, sometimes called \”hate incidents.\” CAIR is not alone in using this methodology: Some groups tracking anti-Semitism do the exact same thing.

Increasing Political Isolation for Jews

If all those statistics are true about Jews still being one of the most liberal voting blocs in the nation, why are they increasingly estranged from the American left?

Easy: The left, ranging from the anti-globalism fringes to the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) to some segments of the mainstream liberal community, has adopted policies and perspectives that even many progressive Jews regard as offensive and dangerous.

Israel Maintains Hope Through Despair

As we enter the year 5763, the mood of the Jewish people is justifiably dark indeed.

It has been a year of increasing violence in the Middle East, growing anti-Semitism in Europe, hostility toward Israel, and a general air of crisis and ominous headlines — a shared misery of collective despair.

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Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.