{"content":[{"text":"Law or Therapy?","bbox":{"left":0.071429,"top":0.055996,"width":0.333727,"height":0.030418999999999995}},{"text":"by: Rabbi Jeremy Rosen","bbox":{"left":0.071429,"top":0.121752,"width":0.24473299999999998,"height":0.015209}},{"text":"There is a myth that on the Day of Atonement most Jews turn up at synagogue. \n I have serious doubts about this “statistic”. Even it is true, attendance is \n around the synagogue rather than in it and is a social identification rather \n than a spiritual one. In order to explain why I think this is let me digress.","bbox":{"left":0.071429,"top":0.153723,"width":0.856562,"height":0.067223}},{"text":"I have a valued friend in Israel, Yair Ronen, who lectures at Ben Gurion \n University on children’s rights. He trained as a lawyer and educational \n counselor and then moved into the social arena. His particular area of \n interest is how the law very often fails children. Yair is a totally devoted \n idealist, deeply committed to caring for children on both sides of the \n conflict, and a man I deeply admire. Recently he sent me two articles he has \n written about how Israel (and indeed most countries) fails to deal adequately \n with children from disadvantaged homes and the problems that arise from not \n taking past victimization of young offenders into consideration. A person’s \n identity is complex and “The Law” is a limited tool that often, and perhaps \n inevitably, is poorly equipped to deal with children whose lives have been \n affected by both internal and external crises and upheavals.","bbox":{"left":0.071429,"top":0.237709,"width":0.856563,"height":0.20592499999999997}},{"text":"Indeed, this week in Britain a report has come out showing how scandalous are \n the conditions of children sent into “care” (a misnomer if ever there was \n one). Half of them end up in prison, almost half are sexually abused, and \n only 6% will achieve minimum educational standards. This is shocking. Even \n more shocking is the fact that this scandal has all but been ignored and \n nothing will be done to ameliorate it.","bbox":{"left":0.071429,"top":0.460396,"width":0.8565630000000001,"height":0.10189800000000004}},{"text":"Yair writes, “One must concede that feelings can be irrational. On the other \n hand, rationality can degenerate into rationalization justifying \n dehumanization of ‘the Other’, which in the case of child law is ‘the Other’ \n or ‘the Other’s child’: the child offender, the illegal immigrant’s child, or \n the enemy’s child. Legal intervention can be traumatic to the child but the \n traumatizing, painful aspect of judicial decision making is often denied, \n ignored or underplayed.” He makes reference to the notorious Bulger case in \n 1993 where politicians and the press intervened to ensure that the two boys \n who murdered the two-year-old were demonized. No attention at all was given \n to their disastrous backgrounds and traumas. Of course, this does not mean \n they should not have been punished. But punishment without therapeutic \n intervention is an example of society’s limitations and refusal to come to \n terms with the underlying issues.","bbox":{"left":0.071429,"top":0.579057,"width":0.856562,"height":0.223263}},{"text":"Yair emphasizes the importance of memory and the need to recognize and \n validate it. If a child’s memory of abuse is dealt with through a healing \n process such as psychotherapy, his or her anger can be channeled creatively \n into a fight for social change and justice. Otherwise it festers into \n criminality or into submissive adaptation, even resignation to an oppressive \n and often unjust social order.","bbox":{"left":0.071429,"top":0.819083,"width":0.845439,"height":0.10189800000000004}}],"images_bbox":[],"images_bbox_not_text_overlap":[]}