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| BELSKY THE KRUM |
GUEST POST by Michael Lesher Esq.
Rabbi Yoel Schonfeld once informed me (by email) that my accurate
reporting on Orthodox rabbis who cover up child sex abuse was “one of
the most treacherous acts…of modern times.”
So perhaps it’s fitting that the one nugget of truthful information
contained in Schonfeld’s encomium
to Rabbi Yisroel Belsky, who died January 28, is that Belsky had a crooked mind.
“I
asked him,” writes Schonfeld in an obituary posted February 2 on an OU
website, “what was the secret to being able to do the [New York Times crossword] puzzle, and
so quickly.” Belsky explained that he had trained his mind “to think as krum (crooked) as the puzzler!”
Indeed
he had. How else explain a man who recently condemned the family of a
young sex abuse victim for bringing the criminal to justice (anyone who
“inform[s] upon a fellow
Jew to the hands of the secular authorities…has no share in the world to
come”) while, in the same open letter, falsely accusing the boy’s
family members of being child abusers themselves?
In
Belsky’s case, crooked morals went hand in hand with crooked thinking –
a pattern Schonfeld appears to emulate. “His solid grasp of
mathematical equations,” writes Schonfeld
of his hero, “allowed him to compute in his mind some of the complex
formulas necessary in kashruth computations.” Belsky displayed his
“solid grasp of mathematical equations” by ridiculing overwhelming
medical evidence that a mohel infected with herpes
can endanger newborns by sucking blood orally from the site of the incision (m’tzitzah b’peh).
“Mathematically,” Belsky claimed, “the number of kids getting infected from metzitzah is
so low that it doesn’t even weigh in as a percentage…. When the numbers
are
that low it is impossible to determine the true cause of herpes.” At
that time, over an 11-year period in New York City alone, two infants
had died, two had suffered brain damage and ten had been hospitalized
from herpes following the use of the procedure Belsky
defended so flippantly.
But
what are a few dead or maimed children as against a rabbi’s ego? Belsky
was incensed that New York City health authorities would dare to “come
in and tell mohalim what
to do,” given that “[t]hey don’t have any understanding of this field.”
And just in case anyone doubted Belsky’s superior knowledge of that
“field,” he told Ami Magazine that he himself could never infect an infant because he always rinsed out his mouth
with Listerine before sucking blood from the penis.
According
to Schonfeld, Belsky held as a “principle” that “what we do conforms to
common sense.” Where was Schonfeld when Belsky was claiming – publicly –
that Switzerland
outlawed kosher slaughter “before the war” because legislators had spotted a Jewish lawyer, who had argued against the ban, eating in a non-kosher restaurant? Someone who actually believed in common sense might have consulted the facts before
inventing fanciful stories about the history of kashruth.
(Switzerland’s ban was inserted into its confederal constitution in
1893, long “before the war” and without any reference to a Jewish lawyer
who ate treif.) But if Belsky preferred to make
up facts, that must have been his version of “common sense” – right?
“He
was also a kind and caring person,” writes Schonfeld. That will come as
news to the child abuse victims Belsky slandered. It may also surprise
others who, for various reasons
(usually telling the truth), found themselves on the receiving end of
Belsky’s venom. Shameless in his defense of convicted child molesters Yudi Kolko &
Yosef Kolko, Belsky was just as shameless when he lied about the dangers
of m’tzitzah b’peh and campaigned for
a practice that kills Jewish babies. One might reasonably question the
humanitarian credentials of a man who did those things. But hey – if you
think exposing child abuse cover-ups is “treacherous,” as Schonfeld
does, maybe letting kids die really does strike
you as the act of a “kind and caring person.”