My name is Shlomo Silber and I am a frum Jew living in Queens. I have a wonderful wife, two beautiful children and, God-willing, another one on the way. I love my job and the community I live in. Recently I have been going through the dilemma of trying to find a school for my older son and I find I am stuck with the hardest decision of my life. When I think of my yeshiva experience, my heart tightens in my chest as I recall those terrible memories.
I went to a couple of people and told them that I wanted to write an article, using my name, in which I will would graphically state what was done to me. It is my hope that maybe it will help some of the tortured souls (child or adult) who feel what I felt; it is my hope that it will raise awareness in our community and give strength to those suffering, to open up, come forward and get help. I thought that I would be encouraged. I thought that they would say “We will support you”, and that it is a very brave and admirable thing that I am doing by sharing my pain and experiences, yet the response I got was shocking. I was told they will ruin my business; they will threaten my family, or just get ready for the lawsuits.
This was very disturbing to me, considering I am just trying to spread a message of awareness to our community. What has become of us if we have this code of silence? And if that silence is broken, will the one who speaks be muzzled with whatever it takes? I have been meaning to write this article for a long time but have always pushed it off. Yet with recent events leading up to the Asifa and hearing the outcry of many children who are now adults who have been abused physically, emotionally and sexually, having seen exposes on TV of entire communities protecting people who hurt children, I thought it is time for me to stand up and speak out and if this has some repercussions, then so be it. Someone has to support those downtrodden and abused souls who are just looking for closure and validation for what has happened to them so they can begin to heal. Minimizing this issue is like telling a Holocaust survivor that the Holocaust never happened or that they should, “Just get over it”. I know this is an extreme statement but unfortunately, it’s true. I get emotional just writing this, thinking back to the days when I was a scared, defenseless child who had no one to turn to. I am writing these events not so that I can defame the frum community, but so that we can rise as a community to protect our children.
I also would like to shed light on what I feel are misguided solutions to these problems. It is very important to regulate our schools and to bring those responsible for the abuse to justice. But I would like to add one element. How do we as parents respond to the needs of our children, especially while they are dealing with emotional trauma? Most of the articles I have read are based on bringing the abusers to justice. I think this is very important and must be done. While I am saddened by the Mafia-like tactics being used in our communities by those we are supposed to trust and admire, let’s not forget that no matter how bad the world around us is, we are the ones responsible for protecting our children. We must make sure they are safe, always. We must show our children that we trust them and will be there for them if something goes wrong. It is extremely important that your children feel that they can trust you and that they won’t be punished if they open up to you with an issue they are having even if they are in the wrong.
It’s time for me to let you all know what it was like growing up as a child in a “frum” household attending Bais Mikroh of Monsey. The saddest part about this story is that it is not a unique story- it is the story of countless frum children. As I close my eyes I recall the feelings of shame, uncertainty, and terror of my surroundings. I remember walking down the halls of my new school, nervous about starting with a rebbe instead of a morah and meeting so many new kids. I will never forget my first grade substitute, Rabbi Rosengarten, who would snap his belt in our faces and say, “I’ll give you an injection for your infection”. One day with Rabbi Rosengarten I spoke out in Rabbi Rosengarten’s class and he hit me with his belt. Later on that day I went home and told my parents about what had happened and they decided to come down the next day and talk to him. Afterwards, Rabbi Rosengarten came back to class, reached into his desk drawer and took out a marker.
On the board he drew a straight line bent over at the top half and said, “If a tree is bent over to one side and you want to straighten it out, it’s not enough to just bend it straight because then it will just bend right back. In order to get it straight, you would have to bend it all the way to the left and then it will come back to the middle. So too, if a boy is laughing in class, it is not enough to make him stop laughing because he will just start laughing again. But if you make him cry then he will not laugh again”.
In second grade when I had Rabbi Braun, he would hold our fingers together with one hand and hit the tips of our fingers with a piece of wood that he would kept in his desk solely for this purpose. One day I said something he considered Chutzpahdik and was told to come to the front of the class to receive my punishment. I didn’t want to go up, so he decided to come to my desk. Knowing what was coming, I ducked under my desk. Suddenly, I felt a stinging pain on my backside and shot my head up into the bottom of the desk. A sharp exposed piece of metal cut into my head. When Rabbi Braun saw that blood was dripping down my face, he picked me up and ran me to the bathroom, where he held my head under the faucet. He then brought me back to class with no apology and continued teaching while I held a paper towel to my head. This time, I knew better than to tell my parents. About a week later at home, I bent over to pick something up and my yarmulke fell off. My mother gasped “What is that gash on your head? to which I replied that I was playing at recess, fell on the wood chips, and cut my head. She said it looked like I should have gotten stitches; I shrugged and went on with my day.
Next year was no better. I had Rabbi Lamm and he would always make me sit on his lap as he would tickle me. It seemed that when I was good, I would get tickled and if I was bad I would also get tickled unless I was really bad. Then he would grab hold of both sides of my cheeks between his thumb and index finger and violently shake my head back and forth. I was not alone in this treatment. I recall many kids in my class getting the tickles and head shakes on a daily basis. By this point in my life, I was far behind my peers in learning and was struggling just to read Hebrew. I would spend most of my days in class daydreaming about being in another place. I was creative and had a strong imagination and yet there was no place for me. Not only was I ridiculed and hit by my Rebbeim, but I was made fun of by my classmates for not being able to read Hebrew. No one ever stepped in to protect me. In class, whenever I was not daydreaming, I was praying that I would not be called on to read the next posuk.
Rabbi Lamm knew that I was struggling and so he called my parents. He told them about a friend who was a great Rebbe and was willing to tutor me at night for free. My parents thanked him and set up an appointment. His friend’s name was Rabbi Shafer.
I remember my father bringing me to an empty Shul where Rabbi Shafer sat alone under a single dim light and smiled at me as I walked toward him. He told my father to pick me up in an hour. He sat me down, then he got up and locked the front door. He sat back down next to me, put his arm around me, and asked me to read from the Chumash for him. I began to read as he leaned over me. I was a little scared and read nervously for him. My father had gone home and told my mother that it was weird because there was nobody else in the Shul with him. My mother must have had a premonition and told my father to run back and get me. When my father came back to the Shul and the front door was locked, he began to pound on the door. I remember being startled from the inside as Rabbi Shafer got up to see what the banging was about. My father came in and said we had to leave. I was too scared to ever go back, so my parents canceled my tutoring.
By the time I was ten, and I knew that I would run as far away as I could from this lifestyle.
I was very excited to start fourth grade. Rabbi Halpert was a new rebbe and all the kids loved him. Rabbi Singer was the rebbe of the other class and we all knew him as the rebbe who smoked during recess. Rabbi Singer was our substitute rebbe when Rabbi Halpert didn’t come. That year baseball cards were the coolest thing to be into, and we would trade them at recess. I brought all of mine in an empty baby wipe container to show all the kids in class. Rabbi Singer came in and caught us trading cards and confiscated them. He told me they were “Goyish” and he was giving them to Rabbi Bodenheimer the principal.
In the middle of that year I got into a fight at school. They called my parents to come pick me up. I cried to my parents that it wasn’t my fault. My father claimed I was being Chutzpadik and just trying to manipulate the situation and hit me so hard, it left a bruise below my eye. The next day, I told the kids in my class that I had gotten into a fight with Goyim on my block and played myself up as a tough guy. As I came in from recess, Rabbi Halpert stopped me before I entered the classroom. He asked me “How did you get that bruise?” I started to blush and lowered my head. He asked me, “Did your father do this to you”? I mumbled yes. He replied “Good. A father only hits because he loves you. It must mean he really loves you”.
I looked up to some of my friend’s brothers who were “off the derech” and daydreamed about someday being like them. I would fantasize about having friends and actually being loved by someone. I remember pleading with my parents to switch me out of my Yeshiva, but my mother would tell me they would never accept me anyway. I was a disaster at home; I was a disaster at school. The only positive recognition I ever got was when I acted out as the class clown. It came with a heavy price but was worth it. That was the only time I actually existed.
In fifth grade, Rabbi Litmanowitz used to tell me that a Goy could read better than me. That stung me worse than any smack I ever got. That year my yeshiva hosted a Bar Mitzvah for a kid that lived in my neighborhood and I was invited. At the Bar Mitzvah, I went upstairs with a couple of other kids to hang out in my classroom during the speeches. One of the kids who was actually the son of the Rabbi in the Shul I davened at on Shabbos took a marker and wrote a curse word on my Rebbi’s desk. The next day, I was taken out of class by Rabbi Litmanowitz and my principle, Rabbi Bodenheimer. Rabbi Bodenheimer cornered me and asked if I knew anything about what was written on Rabbi Litmanowitz’s desk.
At first, I said no. Rabbi Bodenheimer called me a liar. After being interrogated for a while I figured, what have I got to lose? The kid was not even in my Yeshiva so what could even happen to him? I told them it was Rabbi Shweitzer’s son. I remember Rabbi Bodenheimer towering over me as he made an astonished face and asked, “Rabbi Shweitzer’s son?” I nodded my head yes. He told me to go to his office and wait for him while he talked to my rebbe. As I walked down the hall, I felt relieved that I actually wasn’t the one in trouble this time. I waited for a couple of minutes outside his office. Rabbi Bodenheimer eventually came and motioned me to follow him into his office. I followed him in and instead of going to sit behind his desk, he closed the door and told me to take off my glasses. The second I removed my glasses, he slapped me hard across the face and told me what a liar I was and asked me how could I make up such horrible lies about such a Tzadick’s son. I was suspended for a week for a crime I did not commit.
I was so broken and damaged by this point that I would come home after getting in trouble and get screamed at and smacked by my parents. I would go up to my room take out my imitation Swiss army knife, carve symbols into my window sill and curse up at God, my parents and my Rebbeim. When I would get into an argument with my parents on Shabbos, I would run up to my room and switch the lights on and off repeatedly, as if I was punishing God for giving me this horrible life.
In the middle of my fifth grade year I found out there was a “special” class and where every day the kids went to 7/11 in their Rebbe’s car to get Slurpees. I went to Rabbi Bodenheimer and asked him if I could be put in the special class. He said to me, “Are you going to behave?” I said yes.
Rabbi Mendlowitz’s class was in a small room all the way at the end of the hall where the “computer room” was supposed to be. There were three other kids in the class and we would be told stories from the Parsha and then we would go in Rabbi Mendlowitz’s red Maxima to 7/11, get Slurpees and then go with him on whatever errands he had to run. We went shopping; we stopped by the occasional garage sale. Looking back I am shocked at how that class ran and that no adult took issue with it. Even in this class, I was not safe. I remember there were days where when Rabbi Mendlowitz would come to class in a bad mood and if I talked Chutzpadik I would get a smack across the face. Then I would not be able to go to 7/11 that day.
I wound up getting suspended a couple of weeks out of every year. It came to the point where as long as I didn’t bother anybody in class or cause trouble I wasn’t paid attention to. My parents were concerned about me getting into constant trouble, so they took me to see a therapist. I was soon diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed Ritalin. I remember taking it the first day and I paid so much attention in class that my Rebbe called my parents to tell them how good I was that day. I felt so terrible; I felt that the only way I could be good was if I took medicine that forced me to behave. I felt like I was crazy. Nobody ever asked me what was bothering me. Instead they just started medicating me so I could be handled. I started to pretend to take my pills and then just quit even pretending to take them. This sparked a feeling in me that I would suffer all throughout childhood and into adulthood. I was the “special kid” in the class and really, I was learning disabled. One Shabbos afternoon, my father was trying to learn with me. I was struggling to get the words out when he blurted out in frustration “Your sister reads better than you”. He was referring to my younger sister, who was mentally disabled.
I was always labeled as a liar and a manipulator in school and at home. Even when I was telling the truth I told I was a “Shokran” (liar). At some point I gave up even trying to argue and defend myself. It was no use and would probably get me into more trouble.
There was a kid in my class named Areah Krauss his whose mother was diagnosed with cancer. I remember how my whole school would say tehillem for her. I became friends with Areah. One afternoon we decided to cut class together and hang out in the back of the school behind the fence. Once things quieted down and all the classes were in session, we jumped back over the fence that separated us from the house next door. We were on the swings when we decided to play a game by tying my left shoe lace to his right shoe lace and swinging together. We were laughing and swinging when the side emergency exit door opened and Rabbi Bodenheimer came through it and screamed “Get to my office now!” We had no chance to run and hide because our shoes were tied together, so Areah took his right shoe off. I walked over to the Rabbi’s office with my friend’s shoe still tied to mine. Rabbi Bodenheimer took Areah into his office as I waited in the corridor. After a couple of minutes, Areah emerged and walked back to class missing one shoe. Rabbi Bodenheimer signaled me to come in to his office. By this point I knew what was coming. Standing before him as he towered over me, he looked eight feet tall. He began to scream at me and tell me how Areah’s mother has “yenah machlah” (Cancer) and that by corrupting Areah, I am making his mother sicker. He then told me in disgust to bend down and untie my shoe. I got down on one knee and began to untie the laces. Next thing I knew I was being struck from every side and I didn’t know what was happening as Rabbi Bodenheimer smacked me with both hands and kicked me. I left his office that day a boy who was evil, learning disabled and in the middle of committing a murder.
I had been left back in pre-1A and therefore I was one of the older kids in my class. I started putting on Teffilin at the end of 7th grade. I was embarrassed about the fact that I was left back because I was older than everybody else yet they all seemed smarter than me and could learn better. It’s such a shame that so many moments and milestones that I should have enjoyed and been proud of in my life, I spent feeling embarrassed and ashamed. One day at Mincha, I was talking to a kid next to me.
Rabbi Gobioff was the eighth grade rebbe who was also in charge of davening decorum. He saw me talking, clopped on the Bimah and told the whole Yeshiva to stop davening. He called me up to the Bimah. Standing up there, he screamed at me in front of my entire yeshiva. He said, “A bochur who puts on teffilin but has no respect for the Kiddusha of davening!” Then he looked at the rest of the Yeshiva who were now all staring at me and said loudly
“Bochorim, this is a Perah Adam!” I walked back to my seat smiling like I was proud of what had just taken place, but inside I was slowly dying. It wasn’t soon after that I started day dreaming about taking my own life.
On the first day of eighth grade, I was assigned to a desk in the corner of the room and I was allowed to play video games as long as the sound was off and I didn’t disturb any of the kids in my class. I don’t remember what day it was exactly that I stopped caring and really started looking for the trouble I had been accused of making for all my years of elementary school. Maybe I’d lost my innocence the first time I’d been struck by a teacher when I was small and helpless. Maybe it was during all those endless hours of playing Tetris in the corner in eighth grade, while the sounds of my class around me learning and growing together danced tauntingly on the edge of my awareness. It doesn’t really matter. In March of that year, I was thrown out of Bais Mikroh for good, for a fight I got into with Menachem Garfinkel. I slammed his head into a cinder block wall, and then threw all the contents of his desk out of the classroom window. I spent the end of my eighth grade year sitting in my house, fantasizing about becoming a “Bum”.
My parents told me that I would be going to Adelphia for high school and that I had to promise not to make trouble. I looked them straight in the eye and lied to them with relish. I knew that I had one destiny and that was to be the biggest “Bum” Monsey had ever seen. I started smoking cigarettes and drinking whenever I could get my hands on alcohol. There were some older kids who would go into Lakewood and shoplift. I would go with them and steal things that I didn’t need, just giving the items away when I got back to the dorm. I was finally making friends. On the first night of Chanukah of my ninth grade year, I was woken in the middle of the night by a couple of the cool tenth graders. They told me they were going to the Wawa on Rt. 9 to shoplift. They wanted me to join them. For the record, it’s not very easy to walk into a local Wawa at two o’clock in the morning with three other teenagers to steal candy. This was the first of my many arrests. All I could remember was sitting in the back seat of the police car and feeling that I have finally accomplished something. I was officially a “Bum” and it was the first time I felt accepted as a part of something. That night, I was told to pack my bags and that was the last day I was ever in school.
My parents did not react well to my early departure from high school. They screamed, yelled, threatened, they threw things and they hit me. I would soon be smoking marijuana, snorting cocaine and popping any combination of pills and alcohol at the age of fourteen. I was thrown out of my house at fifteen. In the beginning, I would get calls from my parent’s friends and even a local Rav. I was told to get a haircut and to recognize how much I was making my parents suffer. My older brother’s friend once told me to continue to do what I was doing but to be more secretive about it so I don’t embarrass everybody who knows me.
By sixteen, I had racked up five arrests. I became a drug mule for a “frum” drug dealer. I was sent to Amsterdam and brought back four hundred thousand dollars’ worth of ecstasy taped to my body with duct tape. When I got back the first time, the drug dealer gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek and told me that I did a “Great job” and that I’m part of his “family”. He handed me eight thousand dollars cash saying, “Don’t worry; I already took out maaser” (He had also bought me a Tehillem and told me to read it the whole way back on the plane.) A few months later, the drug dealer got arrested and my world crumbled around me.
Somehow I wound up at a Kiruv Yeshivah and became “Shtark”. I got a haircut, grew payos, and started learning three sedarim a day (even though I still had trouble reading Hebrew and had only been keeping Shabbos for about three weeks). I lived this way for a while but still felt a major void in my life, no matter how Frum I was or how much Chessed I did. A friend who had been in therapy was able to see that I was struggling and convinced me to go to therapy as well. When I discussed this with my Rosh Ha-yeshiva, he responded to the therapy with opposition. Thankfully I had one Rebbe who stood by me and helped me make this brave decision and face the demons of my past. After many years of therapy, sorting through my life and facing the past, I have come to realize that I am a person of self-worth and that I genuinely want to do good. This is what gives me the strength and courage to write to you about what I have experienced.
Therapy for me has opened my eyes to what really motivates me. I am able to strip down all the roles I have assumed in life and see the child inside me looking for love and approval from those who were supposed to provide it . It is a grueling process of taking myself back to that classroom, my home and seeing that I was not a bad child, a “shockrin”, a “Mechutziv”. I was placed in those roles by the ones I trusted and loved unconditionally. I was acting the way I did because that’s the only way I knew how to survive. I didn’t know any better and would have believed whatever they told me I was. If only they would have told me that I was smart, kind, and lovable then things would have been very different. Therapy, if done the right way, is an extremely hard and painful process. But the benefits well outweigh the disadvantages and it has enhanced my life as well as the lives of those around me. If someone is suffering from his past and it’s holding him back from living a fulfilling life and being who he wants to be, I would encourage this person seek help. Seek a therapist that will help him face his past and let go of whatever is holding him back from living a healthy, productive life.
Unfortunately my story is not unique. Even from out of the relatively small group of friends and acquaintances I grew up with in Monsey, many lives are still in shambles. It is our responsibility as parents to stand up for our children and listen to what they have to say. You may think that the Rabbis are to blame for my suffering. That is incorrect, Yes, they were terribly wrong in what they did and have no business being Mechanchim, yet it all begins at home. I was compelled to write this article because I read so many articles with similar stories to mine and all the blame is placed on Teachers, Rebbeim, Gedolim, Alcohol at kiddushim and of course the latest one, the Internet.
These above items are a danger to a child once he or she is vulnerable to these dangers due to a lack of self-worth- which is cultivated in the home. If I would have had the proper tools and felt safe at home, I would have come to my parents at the first sign of trouble. They would have protected me properly and helped me cope with what I was going through. They didn’t and it snowballed into this tragedy. No school will ever be perfect and there will always be sickos out there looking to hurt our children physically, emotionally and sexually, no matter what community we are in. The only way to protect ourselves is from within. We must face our own demons and work on ourselves. Only then can we pass feelings of self-worth onto our children. My parents each have their issues and only started sorting them out when things started to go very wrong. They have come a long way and are great grandparents to my children but unfortunately, much damage has been done that could have been avoided. We are still slowly putting the pieces back together.
We need to educate our teachers, parents and community leaders about the warning signs of abuse (of every form). We need to educate our children about sex (in the proper way for their age) and that their body is theirs and no one can abuse it ever and if someone ever does, they come to you, the parent. They need to know that they will be listened to, believed, and that they will not get into trouble no matter what the circumstances are. Our children need to feel safe and protected.
After going through all this and sorting out all my issues, I can’t imagine what would have happened had I not gotten help. I am really thankful to all those that have helped me realize the good within myself. I never knew what real happiness was until I went to therapy and faced my issues. I think that it is important to get rid of the stigma that we don’t need help and all we have to do is not speak Loshon Hara, learn, daven and give Tzeduka.
These are important elements but we must know that it is important to face specific issues that we are having trouble with. Sometimes these issues can only be resolved with the help of professionals. Judaism is a beautiful way of life for some and a daunting task for others, one filled with guilt and shame due to their upbringing. We have to stop pretending that we are a perfect people and that nothing is wrong with ourselves or our communities. The only way that we will ever progress is if each and every one of us looks in the mirror and decides to love and accept the person staring right back at them. Love the imperfections, accept the uncertainty and not judge one another. We should greatly respect any person who tells us he has demons and that he is working on accepting himself for who he is right now, and is striving to grow, on whatever level he is at.
Trying to cover up the issues in our community and in ourselves is just foolish and will only backfire. I hope this article helps us come together and start taking the steps we need to accept ourselves, one another, and to start healing as individuals and as a people.
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