"Detectives told them there could be more than 200 victims, some as far away as Israel."
http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Rabbi-Accused-of-Secretly-Recording-Women-Showering-at-Synagogue-279185151.html
EVERY SIGNATURE MATTERS - THIS BILL MUST PASS!
CLICK - GOAL - 100,000 NEW SIGNATURES! 75,000 SIGNATURES HAVE ALREADY BEEN SUBMITTED TO GOVERNOR CUOMO!
EFF Urges Court to Block Dragnet Subpoenas Targeting Online Commenters
CLICK! For the full motion to quash: http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/hersh_v_cohen/UOJ-motiontoquashmemo.pdf
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
FILTHY BASTARD!
"Detectives told them there could be more than 200 victims, some as far away as Israel."
http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Rabbi-Accused-of-Secretly-Recording-Women-Showering-at-Synagogue-279185151.html
Monday, October 20, 2014
Orthodox Jewish rape survivor buried by community that shunned him
MONSEY, N.Y. (PIX11) – The marker on the freshly-dug grave in the Monsey Cemetery had the name “Joel Deutsch” in Hebrew, the name 34-year old Joe Diangello was given at birth in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Diangello had walked away from the Satmar Hasidic community — and his name — at age 17, ten years after suffering what he said was a brutal sexual assault in a mikvah bath on Marcy Avenue.
“I think when that person raped me, he murdered my Jewish soul,” Diangello told PIX11 Investigates in early 2009, when he finally started going public with his story.
Diangello was buried Sunday by members of the Hasidic community, not long after he was discovered dead in his Manhattan apartment by a social worker.
His close friends who became his true support system in recent years, after Diangello’s family rejected his new lifestyle, said he would not have wanted a Monsey funeral.
Diangello certainly stood out in a crowd, with his dyed, jet-black hair, black fingernails, and heavy metal t-shirts.
The cause of death was listed as a drug overdose, but many friends insisted to PIX11 it must have been accidental, since Diangello had been taking a more positive outlook on life.
He was running marathons, working as a medical biller from his apartment, and enjoying Yankee games.
Still, his life was one filled with pain.
“Joe was a troubled young man,” said Lonnie Soury, a co-founder of Survivors for Justice. “But he struggled with tremendous courage.”
Soury added, “He was rejected by the Hasidic community, because he stood up…because he talked about his sexual abuse.”
Soury pointed out that Diangello would “really go after and expose the rabbis that protected abusers for the last thirty, forty years. He’s a real hero.”
Diangello lobbied state legislators in Albany to change the “statute of limitations” for abuse survivors, so they could have more time to confront the reality of what had happened to them.
He attended the trials of accused abusers and rapists within the Hasidic community, watching a former counselor named Nechemya Weberman get sentenced to 103 years in prison, convicted of raping a female student when she was just 12 years old.
Diangello paid a price for leaving the community, often getting hissed at on the streets of Williamsburg, if he was seen anywhere near his old neighborhood.
His story was one of intense trauma.
Diangello had taken PIX11 to the shul on Marcy Avenue in 2009, explaining that he used to go to the mikvah with his father, starting when he was 7 years old.
“It’s supposed to cleanse your soul,” Diangello explained to me about the mikvah bath.
Instead, when Diangello entered the bath before his father, he said that’s when the assault happened.
“I just felt this unbelievable pain,” Diangello recalled. “I fell under water.”
Diangello added, “It felt like my whole spine crumbled.”
The young man struggled with mental health issues and spent time in the Bellevue psychiatric ward.
Diangello was proud of himself, when he started to pursue healthy outlets, like running.
Joey Diangello became my friend and was wonderful about texting, just to say hello.
I invited him to a Mother’s Day dinner this year with my family in a Brooklyn restaurant, and he happily shared a meal with us.
We were glad to be with him, enjoying his mischievous sense of humor and his amazing blue eyes. But I knew that Joey still carried his pain around.
He made a remark about taking Xanax, an anti-anxiety medicine.
He made a remark about taking Xanax, an anti-anxiety medicine.
The last time I heard from Joey was a text he sent on September 17.
He wanted to let me know that his childhood friend, Joel Engelman—another abuse survivor—had married. I knew he was happy for Joel.
When I asked him if he attended the wedding, he responded in typical, Joey Diangello style, “I didn’t. I have a no wedding or funerals thing. Especially on an NFL Sunday. But I saw the video.”
Rest in peace, Joey Diangello. You traveled this world with a brave soul—and left us better for it.
The Contemporary Ma Nishtana מַה נִּשְׁתַּנָּה - "How is this scandal different from all other scandals and why is the Orthodox world reeling in its aftermath?"
Kesher Israel, the only Orthodox synagogue in downtown Washington D.C.
Rabbi Barry Freundel.
By Haaretz | Oct. 14, 2014 | 9:40 PM | 
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By JTA | May 21, 2014 | 12:42 PM | 1
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By Nir Hasson | Aug. 7, 2013 | 10:21 AM | 5
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Sadly, it’s a sign of our times that no one is exactly stunned by clergy sex scandals anymore. It is arguable whether sexual impropriety by spiritual leaders happens more now than in the past - or if simply more of the cases now come to light. Either way, it seems that hardly a month goes by when we don’t hear something about a priest, minister, imam or rabbi of accused of some form of bad behavior involving sex. In the Jewish community, as elsewhere, the spectrum of offenses range from the revelations of embezzlement of synagogue funds to hush up affairs to yeshiva rabbisconvicted of sexually assaulting their students.
Each time it happens, it rocks a community to its core, and creates waves that affect adherents of that religion far beyond the immediate area. The scandals also provide fuel for those who may have an issue with the religion in question or the form in which it is practiced.
But the underlying lesson is usually the same: once again, we learn that every human being, no matter how exalted or respected, is tragically flawed and capable of terrible things. The fact that someone is learned in holy teaching and stands in front of congregations in ritual garments, preaching to them about distinguishing between good and evil doesn’t make anyone immune from giving in to base or unethical urges.
That said, the unfolding news of why Rabbi Barry Freundel, rabbi of the Kesher Israel synagogue in Washington, D.C. in handcuffs and charged with voyeurism, has succeeded in shocking even those who thought they couldn’t be surprised anymore. The details of his arrest as reported by a local television station:
“D.C. police say Rabbi Freundel used cameras set up in a changing area just outside the mikvah to peep on women. According to a police report, Freundel was seen installing a camera hidden in a clock radio above a shower at the mikvah.
He allegedly told a 35-year-old woman who caught him that he was fixing the shower ventilation...Neighbors who live on O Street say D.C. police arrived at the rabbi's home just before 8:30 a.m. and later arrested him in an alley behind his home where witnesses say he was clearly agitated and very upset. Neighbors say as many as five officers came to the house, spent several hours inside and took several items out of the home, including what they believed to be hard drives or computers.”
How is this scandal different from all other scandals and why is the Orthodox world reeling in its aftermath? Here are a few of the reasons it stands out - and has been discussed incessantly across social media since the moment it was reported.
1. The (alleged) violation of the sanctity of a ritual bath known as the mikveh
If there is any place that should be more intimate, more protected and sanctified, it is a space where people not only make themselves spiritually open and vulnerable, but physically as well. In Orthodox Judaism, which puts such a premium on physical modesty, the vulnerability of nudity is multiplied. Watching videos of people who are naked for reasons of ritual immersion would be a terrible betrayal. The idea of an respected rabbi installing a camera to watch his congregants - and others who use the mikveh such as visitors or converts to Judaism for the purpose of sexual gratification is so horrific as to seem inconceivable.
2. The prominent congregation
Kesher Israel isn’t just any modern Orthodox congregation. When I lived in Washington, D.C. in the 1990’s, it was the place where those who were both powerful and observant belonged - if you wanted to plug into the Washington power network, that was where you went to pray. Located in the wealthiest and most prestigious neighborhood of the capital, the synagogue is frequented by members of Congress, key White House aides, top AIPAC staffers. Current congregants include Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, Senator and former vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman, and New Republic critic and author Leon Wieseltier.
Founded in 1910, according to its website, Moshe Dayan and Ezer Weizman and other Israeli negotiators attended Yom Kippur Kol Nidre services on October 10, 1978 - and two days later, began negotiating with Egypt at Blair House in an effort to find solutions to the unresolved issues following the Camp David negotiations leading to the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty.
And the mikveh isn’t just any mikveh -- it is called the National Capital Mikveh, founded in 2005 for the purposes of allowing Orthodox women to observe family purity, but also allowing men to immerse before holidays and festivals, for brides and grooms before their wedding days and for “conversions under the aegis of the local court of the Rabbinical Council of America.”
It is located in the basement of the building adjacent to Kesher Israel. While voyeurism seems like more of a victimless crime than outright sex abuse, one must only think of the hundreds, if not thousands of women and men now wondering whether their privacy was violated in their most intimate moments.
3. The respected rabbi in question
Rabbi Barry Freundel, by all accounts, is a high-profile, well-liked member of the Modern Orthodox establishment with a flawless reputation - until now. He holds a doctorate, and, according to the synagogue website, he is “an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University, and a Consultant to the Ethics Review Board of the National Institute of Aging of the National Institutes of Health” and serves as the head of the conversion committee of the Rabbinical Council of America and Vice President of the Vaad of Washington.
The fact that the focus of his national work is conversion - and the mikveh is a key part of the conversion process - adds an extra layer of ugliness to the charges he appears to be facing.
No matter which strain of Orthodox Judaism a rabbi in such a scandal belonged to - his positions would be used as some kind of political ammunition in the ongoing intra-Orthodox debate. If he were ultra-Orthodox, there would be charges from liberal quarters that the cloistered and secretive atmosphere of his community made such behavior possible. If he were an ultra-liberal proponent of full female equality, known as Open Orthodoxy, the more conservative forces would say that liberalism was a slippery slope to depravity.
Freundel, as it happens, seems to be as mainstream Orthodox as it gets. He has written in condemnation of homosexual behavior and believes Orthodoxy should “create an environment that is most conducive to motivating the practitioner of homosexuality to want to change his orientation” but if that motivation is absent, “keep this individual within the Torah community” and “create a situation which offers a positive alternative to the "gay synagogue" and to the even worse choice of complete abandonment and assimilation."
He has taken a liberal position regarding women’s prayer groups and holding positions like synagogue president, but spoken out vigorouslyagainst Open Orthodoxy since, “being both “open” and Orthodox sounds to me, unfortunately, like an excuse for anything goes, so long as it can be given a veneer of legitimacy through a bit of superficial talmudic casuistry.”
4. The silver lining - the impressive lack of a cover-up
In the context of an event that is clearly “bad for the Jews” a ray of light is what appears to be admirable behavior by the leaders of the congregation in the face of what must have been a painful discovery. Often, such scandals have come to light with an accompanying tale of attempts by institutional leaders to cover up criminal misbehavior of clergy fearing the damage of scandal. This story seems to be different, with the Kesher congregation leaders taking swift action to alert authorities, even while knowing how it would adversely affect the congregation’s image. According to their website:
“Upon receiving information regarding potentially inappropriate activity, the Board of Directors quickly alerted the appropriate officials. Throughout the investigation, we cooperated fully with law enforcement and will continue to do so. After today’s arrest of Rabbi Dr. Barry Freundel, the Board of Directors suspended him without pay..”
If the congregation turned to law enforcement as swiftly as it appears, their reaction is worthy of praise.
There were plenty of alternative ways they could have reacted: ignoring the problem, sending him to therapy and hoping it would go away, letting him quietly resign scandal-free, which would allow him to take another rabbinical position and potentially re-offend. Instead, they chose to protect their congregation and any potential future victims with quick and decisive action.
The fact that they acted as they did is being noted and praised across social media networks. As one modern Orthodox woman, Sarah Bronson, observed on her Facebook status. “Although it must have been heart-wrenching for them, they cared about their congregants' safety, dignity, and right to privacy more than they care about the synagogue's reputation or the reputation of Orthodox Judaism - as it should be.
To me, this isn't a story about a rabbi behaving badly. This is a story about an Orthodox synagogue’s Board of Directors acting courageously. I applaud them for doing the right thing under very difficult circumstances.”
Sunday, October 19, 2014
Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg is reporting That Joey Diangelo Committed Suicide
Abuse Scandal Plagues Hasidic Jews In Brooklyn
Coburn Dukehart/NPR
Coburn Dukehart/NPR
Coburn Dukehart/NPR
Courtesy of Joel Engelman
Joel Engelman and Joe Diangelo are driving through their old Brooklyn neighborhood. Williamsburg is a place from another time and country. The shop signs are in Hebrew. The men scurry by in long black coats; their hair hangs in corkscrew curls. Married women wear wigs to cover their heads.
Engelman and Diangelo haven't been here in years. They just met a few weeks ago, but as they begin swapping stories and the names of family members, they realize they have a lot in common. Both men are in their 20s, both were raised as strict Hasidic Jews, and both fled their upbringing for the same reason.
"Are you ready for this?" Engelman asks Diangelo, glancing at his friend in the back seat.
"Yeah," Diangelo says, his breath quickening. "Yeah, I'll do it, just a quick pass by."
Diangelo grows quiet as we approach a nondescript brownstone building: a synagogue.
"See the Hebrew sign?" he says, pointing. "You go downstairs, and that's where the mikvah is."
The mikvah is a bathhouse usually used by women for ritual cleansing. But in some Hasidic communities, like this one, fathers bring their young sons on Friday afternoons before Shabbat begins. Twenty-one years ago, when he was 7, Diangelo recalls going to the mikvah with his father to find the place packed with naked men and boys.
"And I was in the tub, and I had my back turned, and somebody raped me while I was in the water," he says. He takes a shaky breath. "And I didn't know what happened. I couldn't make sense of it, really."
Diangelo says he never saw the man who abused him. These days, monitors are posted by the bath to stop any sexual activity. But back then, the boy was on his own. He told no one but began refusing to go to the mikvah. He left Orthodox Judaism when he was 17. He changed his name from Joel Deutsch and cut almost all ties with his family and friends.
Now, Diangelo wears black leather and mascara. He plays in a rock band and takes refuge in the heavy-metal lyrics of Metallica.
"There are so many songs, you know. They have a latest song, which is called 'Broken, Beaten & Scarred,' and one of the verses is: 'They scratched me, they scraped me, they cut and raped me.' " He laughs wearily. "And that's my life right there. When I listen to it, it gives me strength."
Allegations Of Abuse
For these two men, this is a tour through aching secrets and violent memories. Diangelo and Engelman are unusual because they let their names be used. But they believe that sexual abuse is woven throughout this Hasidic community.
For Engelman, the loss of innocence came at school.
"This is it, right here," he says.
Engelman parks his car across from the United Talmudical Academy, a hulking building on a desolate street. This was the yeshiva, or Jewish boys' school, that Engelman attended. Engelman says he was 8 years old, sitting in Hebrew class one day, when he was called to the principal's office. When he arrived, he says, Rabbi Avrohom Reichman told him to close the door.
"He motioned for me to get on his lap, and as soon as I got on the chair, he would swivel the chair from right to left, continuously," Engelman says. "Then he would start touching me while talking to me. He would start at my shoulders and work his way down to my genitals."
Engelman says this occurred twice a week for two months. He told no one for more than a decade. Reichman was, after all, a revered rabbi. Four years ago, he told his parents. And a year ago, when he heard that Reichman had allegedly abused several other boys, they confronted Reichman. When the school heard about it, they gave the rabbi a polygraph.
"He failed miserably," Engelman says. "So they told me, 'This guy is gone. This guy has to go.' "
But a few weeks later, a religious leader from the school approached Engelman's mother, Pearl. He posed an astonishing question: On a scale of 1 to 10, how bad was the molestation?
She was speechless. Then she says, the man continued, " 'We found out there was no skin-to-skin contact, that it was through clothing.' So he's telling me, 'On a scale of 1 to 10, this was maybe a 2 or a 3, so what's the big fuss?' "
The school hired Reichman back. That was in July 2008 — one week after Joel Engelmen turned 23 and could no longer bring a criminal or civil case against the rabbi.
An Open Secret
Reichman and school officials declined to be interviewed for this story. But Rabbi David Niederman, who heads the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg, says the school did its due diligence. He says the allegation was thoroughly investigated by an independent committee of lay people and rabbis.
"I'm convinced that they made a serious investigation," he says. "They felt that it's not credible."
Now Engelman has filed a long-shot civil suit against Reichman and the school, claiming they broke an oral contract.
Reichman's attorney, Jacob Laufer, says the lawsuit is baseless and that the community is fully behind the rabbi.
"Even after these accusations were publicly made," he says, "the parents continue to compete among themselves for the opportunity to have their children be educated by Rabbi Reichman."
The Reichman case is not isolated. Four ultra-Orthodox rabbis in Brooklyn have been sued or arrested for abusing boys in the past three years. That's a tiny fraction of the actual abuse, says Hella Winston, author of Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels. She says that in researching her book, she encountered dozens of alleged victims who told her sexual abuse is an open secret in the Hasidic community. But the community is so insulated and the rabbis are so powerful that few dare to come forward.
"If I become known as an informer, then people also won't want to have anything to do with my family," she explains. "They won't want to marry my children, won't want to give me a job. This is the fear."
But more and more accusations against rabbis have begun to circulate. Last August, politician and radio talk show host Dov Hikind devoted an hourlong program to sexual abuse. He interviewed Pearl Engelman, who spoke under an alias, about her son's case.
The calls flooded in. Hikind, who is an Orthodox Jew himself, represents this area in the New York Assembly. He says after the show, people started showing up at his office with their stories.
"Fifty, 60, 70 people," he says, "but you got to remember for each person who comes forward, God only knows how many people are not coming forward."
Ongoing Investigations
Hikind refuses to release the names of alleged perpetrators, although he is working with the district attorney's office. He says the people who confided in him are afraid to go public, which creates a perfect situation for abusers.
"If you're a pedophile, the best place for you to come to are some of the Jewish communities," he says. "Why? Because you can be a pedophile and no one's going to do anything. Even if they catch you, you'll get away with it."
"To me, it does not make sense," says Niederman, of the United Jewish Organizations, "that so many people have been violated and for so many years they have been quiet. Something does not add up. It's being blown out of proportion — big time."
Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes says he has 10 active sexual abuse cases involving Orthodox Jews — including a school principal who was recently arrested on a lead from Hikind. And Hynes says there could be many more. Yeshivas are private schools, which means they don't have to report accusations of sexual abuse to civil authorities.
"I've got no way to know if there's a pattern of concealing the conduct," he says.
Hynes says the Jewish leaders — like Catholic bishops — try to handle these affairs internally, through a rabbinical court. It's a practice that infuriates him.
"You have no business taking these cases to religious tribunals," Hynes says. "They are either civil or criminal in nature. Or both. Your obligation is to bring these allegations to us and let us conduct the investigation."
Hynes says he's trying to work out a memorandum of understanding with the rabbis, in which they promise to bring the prosecutor every allegation of abuse.
Pearl Engelman is skeptical: The rabbis have hardly been forthcoming in her son's case. Still, she loves her community and worries these allegations have tarnished it.
"This is a community of the most wonderful people, hardworking people who lead righteous lives," she says. "And it's just a few corrupt people who give us a bad taint."
Her son Joel isn't so sure it's that few. Anyway, for him, any remedies come too late.
"Pretty much, I left my childhood here," he says. "After I left here, I had a totally different picture of school, religion and life."
But Engelman hopes that his story will shine a light on the secret and, perhaps, protect the next generation of children in this community.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99913807
“We’re flabbergasted, gobsmacked and dumbfounded,” said the head of the rabbinical council of __________.
** Molester Rabbi Mad Libs **
Talking about sex crimes in an insular religious community is hard. That is why I offer you today a handy form for dealing with the latest rabbinical sex-criminal story. Just fill in the biographical and geographical details, and you’re ready to go!
The Jewish community of __________ was shocked to learn today that respected local Rabbi __________ has been implicated in a sex crime.
“We’re so shocked to hear this,” said one community member. “And it’s so totally unprecedented!”
Local police said they are investigating the allegations of __________, against Rabbi __________including putting his __________ on the __________ of unsuspecting community members who came to him for guidance and counseling.
“We’re flabbergasted, gobsmacked and dumbfounded,” said the head of the rabbinical council of __________. “There was no way any of us could have seen this coming. I mean, there were allegations of sexual and professional impropriety, and we gave them all the weight that we would any such accusations coming from women, children, non-Jews or non-religious Jews, all of whose testimony is deemed inadmissible by the Torah. Perhaps there had been some transgression of Jewish law, but certainly a man who violates what he spends his entire career exhorting others to follow would not dare commit a crime! I mean, in this case, he did, but did I mention how awestruck, dumbstruck and thunderstruck we are? And it’s so totally unprecedented!”
However, some in the community cautioned against premature adjudication. “Let’s not rush to judgment,” said longtime supporter __________. “Let’s wait until after arrest, indictment, trial, conviction, sentencing, appeal and the civil suit to discuss this issue. At that point, I will remind you that a) Rabbi __________ has paid his debt to society; b) no one really knows what went on behind closed doors except Rabbi __________, the complainant and any electronic recording devices present; c) you apparently haven’t heard of the Jewish concept of repentance. Look, he once gave a sermon I really liked. Could such a man commit such a crime? It just doesn’t add up. And it’s so totally unprecedented!”
Others argued that the failure was systemic. “We must face the grim reality and an issue which haunts our community,” opined one observer. “It’s high time our schools, synagogues and communities face the real problem: insufficient Internet connectivity. Surely if Rabbi __________ had access streaming high-definition pornography, this heinous crime would never have been committed.” Other likely culprits identified were bible criticism, leftist media, female rabbis and the gays.
Jewish leaders across the greater __________ area were particularly alarmed. “I am extremely concerned about what this means for our community,” said __________. “Wait, what does he wear on his head? Well, that’s not my style of headgear. I’m not surprised that a practitioner of that type of Judaism would do such a foul thing. Even though it’s so totally unprecedented.”
Rabbi __________ has been suspended while the investigation continues. While this community digests its shock, everyone agrees on one thing: there is absolutely nothing to be learnt from this experience.
Read more: Molester Rabbi Mad Libs | Yoseif Bloch | The Blogs | The Times of Israel http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/molester-rabbi-mad-libs/#ixzz3GbMkdf6t
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