More from the fuming, delusional hatred department. Noson
Leiter, of the rather unappealingly named Torah Jews for Decency, is apparently
one of the Religious Right’s favorite rabbis, and has appeared at Tea Party
conferences along with luminaries like Rick Scarborough.
Leiter rose to a modicum of fame when he blamed Hurricane Sandy on New York’s marriage equality law. He was, of course, not the only dingbat to do so,
but might have been the only one to point out the appearance of a double rainbow after the storm as evidence that Hurricane
Sandy was a sequel to the Flood (which God, according to the Bible, explicitly promised never to do again).
Leiter had previously worked with Liberty Counsel and New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms in an unsuccessful lawsuit to overturn said law. Not everyone was impressed with Leiter’s observations.
Leiter has also asserted that the “end game” of the gay rights
movement is “child molestation.” (No,
he has no decency, which is presumably why he feels the need to put “decency”
in the name of his organization.) “They are
after our kids,” says Leiter; “they
are after the bibles and guns that Americans cling to but they are also after
us and after our kids.” He also warned that gay rights advocates “will not rest until all of their opposition
is totally eliminated,” but fortunately assured us that they will ultimately
lose, because “the Lord will vanquish
evil.” Apparently, this is a recurring theme; also in connection with
blaiming Hurricane Sandy on the gays, Leiter said that the “LGBT radical homosexualist movement”
will increase child abuse by giving molesters a “license to victimize” children and even “a certain degree of diplomatic immunity.”
Rabbi calls Hurricane Sandy 'divine justice' for New York gay marriage
A Jewish Rabbi compares devastating floods in Manhattan to biblical disasters, claiming it is a message from God
"When someone like Barry Freundel violates you, you aren’t just robbed of
your dignity and your safety. You are also robbed of your faith and,
very often, of your religious community, which can view you as the real
betrayer of the faith for speaking out."
Roy Moore Reminds Me of My Rabbi
Rabbi Barry Freundel leaving a Washington courthouse in 2015 after pleading guilty to 52 counts of voyeurism
In
2014, on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, Rabbi
Barry Freundel led the congregation of his Washington synagogue in
pursuit of humble repentance before God. Ten days later, he was arrested
and charged with dozens of counts of voyeurism. Ultimately, the rabbi
was accused of having surreptitiously videotaped more than 150 women on hidden cameras in the bathroom of the mikvah, the ritual bath.
That
bath, adjacent to the synagogue, was where I immersed myself upon
completing my conversion to Orthodox Judaism in 2010. It turned out that
this clergyman I trusted had set up a camera inside a clock radio that
taped me and other women as we undressed. His fall became one of the
biggest stories in the Jewish world that year.
In
the past few days, in the wake of the accusations that Roy Moore, the
ostentatiously religious Republican running for Senate in Alabama,
sexually assaulted teenage girls, the case of Barry Freundel is all I
can think about.
There
is something particularly insidious about being victimized by a man who
claims to be righteous. When someone like Barry Freundel violates you,
you aren’t just robbed of your dignity and your safety. You are also
robbed of your faith and, very often, of your religious community, which
can view you as the real betrayer of the faith for speaking out.
At least that’s what happened to me.
When
I was introduced to Rabbi Freundel in 2009, I was 23 and eager to
become officially Jewish. He was one of the most prominent modern
Orthodox rabbis in the country, in large part because he had settled a
turf war between the Israeli rabbinate and diaspora authorities over the
validity of American conversions. He was the gatekeeper for conversions
nationally and had a monopoly on conversions in Washington.
One
morning several years after my conversion had been completed, a friend
emailed with a short news item that my rabbi — whose name was still on
my holiday card list — had been arrested. In an instant, all of the
strangest moments of my conversion experience made sense.
I
was one of only four women to come forward and tell their stories, and
because of my public role as a writer, I became his most well-known
victim. I drove from my home in New Jersey with my toddler and newborn
to speak at his sentencing hearing in 2015 in Washington, where he was
sent to more than six years in prison.
It’s
hard to describe the depth of my feeling of betrayal. As a convert, I
wasn’t just another student of Rabbi Freundel. My faith and practice —
my Judaism — was shaped by his words, deeds and thought. For those of us
victimized by trusted religious leaders, every day is a struggle to
disentangle our negative associations of beautiful rituals from the ugly
abusers who taught us about their meaning.
An
Orthodox Jew, Rabbi Freundel was fixated on the minutiae of Jewish law.
He drilled his converts in the proper blessings to say over a banana or
a pretzel, and the order in which they should be recited should we
happen to eat both at the same meal. This kind of knowledge was the
bedrock of my conversion experience. But how could I continue to make
myself care about such details when it became clear that the man who
taught them to me valued knowing the blessing for a specific food group
over behaving like a decent human being?
Despite
having grown up as a Jew (my father was Jewish, but according to
Orthodox law only the children of Jewish mothers are Jewish), there were
many aspects of observant Jewish life that were new to me until the
year I spent converting. The foundation of so much of my religious
practice is inextricably tied to that period of my life, and thus, to
Rabbi Freundel. I have not been to services in years because the tunes
sung on Shabbat remind me so much of him.
Every
public victim of a famous sexual predator must endure uncomfortable
conversations with strangers and, thanks to the internet, never knowing
if the person you’ve just met already knows your story. But when you
accuse a religious figure, there’s a whole other kind of discomfort, one
that comes from the friends, family members and other religious leaders
who consider speaking out about a religious crime as airing dirty
laundry for the entire world to see.
While
Rabbi Freundel had few defenders in the Jewish community after his
fall, there were plenty of people — fellow rabbis included — who very
quickly made light of him, made him into a punch line, in the process
minimizing his crime. Others thought his prison sentence was overkill —
after all, we hadn’t been physically assaulted.
A
significant number of friends, relatives and religious leaders have
never once mentioned the case to me, despite my role as its most public
victim. Orthodox Jews already face an uphill battle in the modern world,
they say, and drawing attention to these sordid stories makes that hill
that much steeper. These people also prefer not acknowledging what
happened to me and so many other women because it’s more comfortable to
pretend it never happened.
I
too once felt that way. I preferred not to see the abuses in the
community I had voluntarily joined as an adult because witnessing my
community’s willful blindness to those abuses could send me over the
edge. Being the victim of a sexual crime stripped me of that luxury.
In
a strange way, having the crime committed against me captured on tape
was a blessing: Prosecutors noted that Rabbi Freundel could clearly be
seen setting up the camera and taking it down. Nobody could attach the
qualifier “if true” to my charges. The evidence unearthed by the police
was irrefutable.
For
Roy Moore’s accusers, who say they were preyed upon 40 years ago when
they were 14 to 18 years old, hard evidence like this does not exist,
and so they face the pain not only of coming forward, but also of being
disbelieved and disparaged. Mr. Moore says he doesn’t even know Beverly
Young Nelson, who accused him on Monday of assaulting her when she was
16, never mind the fact that it appears he signed her yearbook.
In the meantime, Mr. Moore’s wife has posted a letter signed by 50 pastors, written during the primary season. (Though some of those pastors are saying that they do not, in fact, support Mr. Moore.)
“We are ready to join the fight and send a bold message to Washington:
dishonesty, fear of man and immorality are an affront to our convictions
and our Savior and we won’t put up with it any longer,” the letter
says. “We urge you to join us at the polls to cast your vote for Roy
Moore.”
For
these believers, losing Mr. Moore means losing an outspoken voice for
traditional Christian values. He rose to prominence in the evangelical
world for giving up his bench as a judge not once, but twice, for
placing his religious beliefs ahead of his judicial duties. Last month
The Washington Post reported on a poem
Mr. Moore recited at a rally at a Baptist Church: “You think that God’s
not angry that this land is a moral slum? How much longer will it be
before his judgment comes?”
His
defenders argue that not voting for Mr. Moore, and therefore losing a
Republican Senate seat and possibly control of the Senate, could lead to
worse outcomes for Christians than simply holding their noses and
electing him to office.
They
could not be more mistaken. The damage that will be done to the
Republican brand and those Christians who watch their religious leaders
stand by Mr. Moore will be irreversible. If he wins, the Republicans may
have a reliably conservative vote in the Senate, but one thing is
guaranteed: Religious leaders who defend him risk their flock being
infected with the same disenchantment I was after the arrest of my
rabbi.
Religious
leaders often fret that such creeping faithlessness puts society at
risk more than any political ideology. As prominent evangelical put it
in a 2006 Washington Times column:
“Our peace and happiness as well as our prosperity depend not on any
political party or any great leader, but rather upon our return as a
nation to faith in Almighty God.”
It’s a lovely message, but one that’s too often discredited by its messengers. The man who wrote that column? Roy Moore.
