Sha'arei Mishpat College

Habitual residence is a key concept in the scheme of the Hague Child Abduction Convention because it determines the applicability of the mandatory return mechanism. However, the concept is not defined, and over the years there have developed different approaches thereto. In recent years, there has been increasing doctrinal uniformity as a result of wide adoption of the hybrid approach. However, there are real disparities in the way in which this approach is applied by different judges and the question of habitual residence remains one of the most litigated issues under the Convention. This article reviews recent case law developments and explains the disparities. It then proceeds to propose guidelines that might assist in increasing uniformity and ensuring that findings of habitual residence promote the objectives of the Convention.

This article presents, for the first time in the literature, the Israeli Chief Rabbinate’s policy on conversion to Judaism during the past seventy years. It focuses on the conversion policy applied to immigrants who are non-Jewish according to Jewish (Orthodox) parameters. The article’s main question is: what was the rabbinical establishment’s policy regarding the conversion of non-Jewish immigrants? Did the Israeli establishment encourage non-Jewish immigrants to convert to Judaism so that they could fully join the Jewish majority society, or did it, on the contrary, raise the level of requirements and make it difficult for them to convert? This question reflects a deeper one: How did the establishment of the State of Israel affect Israeli halakhic ruling? Was the creation of a Jewish sovereign state halakhicly significant for the Israeli rabbis? The main argument presented in this study is that the halakhic policy of conversion was indeed deeply influenced by the state, and that Israeli halakhic ruling has unique characteristics distinguishing it from Orthodox rulings in the Diaspora. At first sight, this claim is not new; many scholars have already demonstrated “Religious Zionist influence” on halakhic rulings on conversion to Judaism as well as on other issues.1 The exposure of new sources in this article reinforces this claim by providing further in depth scholarly analysis of this topic. At the same time, this article will also point out the limitations of this claim by revealing Zionist rabbis’ difficulties in applying Israeli halakha. Finally, while the Ultra-Orthodox’s influence on contempoary struggles over conversion in Israel today is well known, this article shows that as much as the Ultra-Orthodox have influenced the state’s policies on conversion, the state has in turn shaped the Ultra-Orthodox’s views of conversion. Thus, while not necessarily Zionist, the Ultra-Orthodox position is essentially Israeli.

There is growing concern over childrens in today's technological world. However, most of the research on children's focuses on third party threats, such as commercial websites. Little work has been done on children's in their relationship with their parents, and specifically, from their parents. This article attempts to instigate a discussion on this timely issue. For most adults, the place where our is most protected is the home. For children, however, having in their home is far from a certainty, and it is becoming ever less so. While it is true that have always been able to invade their children’s by going through their schoolbags, reading their personal diaries and the like, nowadays children and youth are seen as at risk from online predators, pedophiles, cyberbullies and other online dangers. Whereas parents may have traditionally been encouraged to trust their children, today they are encouraged to safeguard their children, including by invading their privacy. Monitoring has become associated with good parenting, and the surveillance of children has been framed in a language of safety, protection, and care. Today's children are the most watched over generation in memory. Children express concern about their parents' snooping and see it as an invasion of their intimate and social lives. Nonetheless, children's is overlooked and given scant consideration, if any. In this article we identify and address the difficulties in recognizing children’s within the family unit. The first difficulty is that the discourse has so far been developed almost exclusively in reference to adults and is applied only awkwardly to the rights of children. Where children are concerned, is considered to be dangerous and inherently associated with risk. We demonstrate that theories of can be adapted to include children and point to the value and significance of for children. The other difficulty in recognizing a privacy problem for children in their homes and family relationships concerns the nature of the parent-child relationship, as well as the general tension between the of the family as a relational entity and the of its individual members. Looking critically at the prevailing legal situation in both American jurisprudence and in international documents in which is dominant for adults but less so for children, and even less so for children vis-a-vis their parents, this Article suggests a balanced individual children's right for from their parents, which offers solutions to parent-child conflicts both in the traditional offline world and the digital online world. We call for a clear recognition of children's individual right to that is separate from, and may even operate against their parents. At the same time, however, we acknowledge that this right should be qualified to some extent according to the child's age and evolving capacities.

This Article sets out to initiate the development of a theory about the financial obligations that joint parenthood imposes. It considers what joint parents owe one another, separate and apart from any obligation they may or may not have as former spouses or partners. The Article suggests that parenthood is not merely a vertical relationship between an adult parent and a child, but also a horizontal relationship between adults who share it. It is further suggested that the relationship created by joint parenthood should be a significant factor in defining adult family relationships and their legal implications. This proposal intends to contribute to promoting caregiving as a value, in law in general and in family law in particular. This Article focuses on the financial obligations joint parenthood imposes, based on the premise that caring for children and the costs of such care are the joint responsibility of a child’s parents. Childrearing costs as defined in this article refer not only to the actual money spent on providing children with food, healthcare, education, clothing, and the like, but also, and even primarily, to the personal costs that parenthood exacts from parents in terms of the impairment of earning capacity or career progress, and the loss of leisure time. The Article suggests that when co-parents do not share a relationship, either because they have separated or because they never had one, there are good reasons to be concerned about the way the costs of raising children are allocated between them. The Article addresses the failure of existing legal frameworks of property division, alimony, and child support to adequately deal with the concerns over the allocation of childrearing costs between parents, and calls for a new legal framework to be defined to address this issue.

α-synuclein (α-Syn) is a neuronal protein that accumulates progressively in Parkinson’s disease and related synucleinopathies. Attempting to identify cellular factors that affect α-Syn neuropathology, we previously reported that polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) promote α-Syn oligomerization and aggregation in cultured cells. We now report that docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) a 22:6 PUFA affects α-Syn oligomerization by activating retinoic X receptor (RXR) and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ2 (PPARγ2). In addition, we show that dietary changes in brain DHA levels affect α-Syn cytopathology in mice transgenic for the Parkinson’s disease-causing A53T mutation in human α-Syn. A diet enriched in docosahexaenoic acid, an activating ligand of RXR, increased the accumulation of soluble and insoluble neuronal α-Syn, neuritic injury and astrocytosis. Conversely, abnormal accumulations of α-Syn and its deleterious effects were significantly attenuated by low dietary docosahexaenoic acid levels. Our results suggest a role for activated RXR/PPARγ 2, obtained by elevated brain polyunsaturated fatty acids levels, in α-Syn neuropathology.