NY Jewish leaders asked governor to release Hasidic abuser, records show
Rabbis from Haredi communities appealed to commute sentence of Nechemya Weberman, imprisoned for abusing an adolescent in 2013, arguing that his sentence was disproportionate
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| Nechemya Weberman was convicted and sentenced to 103 years for child sexual abuse, October 16, 2012. |
NEW YORK — Jewish leaders in New York appealed to the governor for the release of a Hasidic community counselor imprisoned for sexual abuse, arguing that his sentence was disproportionate, according to court documents that surfaced this month.
Nechemya Weberman, 67, an unlicensed religious counselor in the Satmar Hasidic movement, was sentenced to 103 years in prison in 2013, in a major case for the New York Jewish community.
He was convicted of 59 counts, including sustained sexual abuse of a child, endangering the welfare of a child and sexual abuse!
Weberman’s sentence was reduced to 50 years later in 2013. He is incarcerated in the Shawangunk Correctional Facility in upstate New York.
The case resurfaced this month when Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez backed a move to issue a new sentence for Weberman. Weberman is scheduled to appear in court next month.
As the case reemerged, court filings obtained by The Times of Israel showed that last December, an array of Jewish leaders signed a letter to New York Governor Kathy Hochul seeking a commutation for Weberman’s immediate release. The previously unreported letter was submitted to the court as a reference for resentencing in June, along with other letters of support from Weberman’s family and supporters.
The letter called Weberman’s sentence “absorbently excessive,” saying he had not incurred any infractions during his 12 years in prison and that his sentence was “much greater by comparison to others held guilty of a similar crime.”
“While we strongly condemn the nature of this crime, we do believe Mr. Weberman’s excessive sentence was placed upon him to set an example to the Orthodox Jewish community,” the letter said. “Using him because he is an Orthodox Jew as a scapegoat is unjust.”
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| Nechemya Weberman, left, a community counselor in New York City’s Hasidic Jewish community, confers with his lawyer George Farkas in Brooklyn Supreme Court, January 22, 2013, in New York |
The letter was signed by 13 prominent IMMORAL/CORRUPT rabbis representing an array of
Hasidic groups in New York City and a representative of Yeshiva
University. The university did not reply to a request for comment. HERE THEY ARE:https://static-cdn.toi-media.com/www/uploads/2025/11/Binder1.pdf
The letter said that, due to Weberman’s health problems, his imprisonment amounts to a life sentence. A doctor also submitted a letter attesting to Weberman’s “deteriorating health.”
The New York State constitution grants the governor the ability to commute prison sentences.
Gonzalez also asked then-governor Andrew Cuomo to consider a commutation of Weberman’s sentence in 2021, saying Weberman had been “singled out for an unusually harsh punishment,” according to court filings.
Cuomo and Hochul did not publicly respond to the requests.
The Brooklyn district attorney’s office said on Tuesday, “This was a horrific case, but fairness compels us to look critically at sentences like this one that fall wildly outside the range for other defendants convicted of the same crimes.”
No Mercy for Monsters: When Rabbis Plead for the Unforgivable
It is an obscenity that in our time, when Jewish children are still healing from wounds inflicted in the dark corners of their own communities, we see rabbis—men who claim to bear the Torah’s moral authority—signing letters begging for leniency for sexual abusers and consumers of child pornography. What Torah are they reading? What G-d are they serving? Certainly not the G-d of justice, nor the Torah of truth....
READ THE ENTIRE ESSAY:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/no-mercy-for-monsters-when-rabbis-plead-for-the-unforgivable/
Until the rabbinate purges this moral rot from its ranks—until letters of “support” for abusers are replaced by public cries for the protection of children—the rabbis who sign them will bear the shame of standing on the wrong side of Heaven. Because Heaven weeps not for the predator, but for the child. This sickness in parts of our rabbinic leadership—the reflex to “protect” the abuser because he once wore a yarmulke and learned in a yeshiva—is nothing less than moral collapse.
READ:
https://theunorthodoxjew.blogspot.com/2025/10/no-mercy-for-monsters-when-rabbis-plead.html
11 comments:
YU will point out that R' Schechter wants his name off the letter. Who cares? WHAT WAS IT DOING THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE?
If mandatory castration is included with commutation or parole, he will be less of a danger to civilization. That applies to other predators as well
I may have missed it, but did the purpotrator here ever publicly beg forgiveness from his victims or express remorse for his actions? Did the "Rabbis" who signed the letter asking for leniency ever publicly urge him to do so?
Here's the part that makes one pull on one's hair. Commute his sentence because it was too harsh? First of all, polyrapist so no punishment, even a pair of garden shears to the scrotum, is too harsh, but okay, you' think he was punished too much for ruining multiple lives. Ask for a reduction. Commute? Really? Are you both immoral and stupid?
How was a supposed gadol be so easily misled? Is it every day someone asks you to sign a letter for a convicted child rapist? This isn’t the first time he has said severely infantile and/or stupid things. At one point yu was doing to have someone to listen to his shiurim and decide which ones were fit to be put up on the internet. Where is his discretion? Btw, did he similarly blindly accept a certain famous person’s sincerity to Judaism when he was on the Bais din which converted her for marriage? Did he look into it at all? I heard that the CRC in Chicago may be doing similar conversions as well.
Schechter should be dumped by the OU --- He lost all ne'emonus!
Is Herschel’s wife related to a former ry at YTV?
SILof R' Shapiro
Was RHS originally against Richard Joel being appointment president of YU and I think even had a tehillim session against it in the Bais Medrash and then one of his son’s was given a job by Richard Joel and anything was at the very least amicable from then on. I’m not saying there was anything wrong with a non Rabbi being appointed - I couldn’t care less - but according to him that it was so bad that he needed to say tehillim against it, what changed besides his son being given ac job?
I've always believed that Schechter's character is lacking a moral compass!
Some Yu RY’s children were renowned for only looking for super rich shidduchim. Speaking of lacking moral character. Where was it learned from? I remember when I was at a certain yeshiva in Eretz Yisroel, many yu students would discuss their desire to marry cash money. This was the outlook of at least some a while back. No shame. They’d say it straight out. Did the community affect the RY’s families, the RY’s affect the community, or were the independently focused on the same thing. In the charedi world it’s taken as a given to chase $ - kollel welfare lifestyle - horrific middos - but at yu people are mostly supposed to get jobs - what’s the reason for the horrific middos.
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