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Hasidic pop singer Lipa Schmeltzer |
(A7) Hasidic pop singer Lipa Schmeltzer, one of the prominent singers in the haredi sector, went public last week with a pair of YouTube videos revealing that he suffered sexual abuse as a child.
The videos, released in Hebrew and English, touched on Schmeltzer’s difficult childhood, and the therapy he has since undergone.
. “I have gone through many difficult things in my life,” he shared in the Hebrew video, posted on his YouTube channel just before the Shavuot holiday.
“At that time, they would take this child to live elsewhere, without going to court, without calling it rape. I don’t want to make a story out of it. I’m not looking to go back and judge people; I want to move forward.”
“I am sharing this after much thought, in order to be whole with myself, with all the families who hear my music, so that they truly know who Lipa Schmeltzer is from within.” He added that he prays his video “changes someone’s life.”
In the English video, Schmeltzer elaborated about the therapy he underwent for years, following various childhood traumas.
“I’ve been through a lot of trauma. I’ve been through every type of abuse – physically, mental, verbal, and I’m not here to point fingers.”
Regarding the handling of such abuse within the tightly-knit Skver Hasidic community he grew up in in New Square, New York, Schmeltzer linked the inability of his parents and teachers to support him as a child to the legacy of the Holocaust.”
“I will tell you not to judge. The teachers who were teaching me… were taught by Holocaust survivors.”
“The Hasidic community, the ‘black-and-white’ community, the haredi community, was founded by people who came out of the concentration camps. We carry this in our DNA, we carry the trauma, we carry the pain.”
“These people, including my father and mother, never went for therapy. My father never saw the funeral of his father, because his father is in a mass grave. And he carried that.”
“Why am I sharing all this? All my fans know me, they are connected to me. They know my music, but I get all these judgments sometimes – ‘why do you do this or that’.”
“I feel like talking about my real me will help me move forward.”
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