Hundreds at Event Against Abuse

A standing-room only crowd packed Lubavitch Yeshiva in Crown Heights for a powerful event Monday to combat child abuse in the Orthodox Jewish community.

By COLlive reporter
Photos: Itzik Roytman

A standing-room only crowd of 800 packed into Lubavitch Yeshiva hall in Crown Heights Monday for a historic event to combat child abuse in the Orthodox Jewish community.

The "Night of Education and Awareness" organized by the Jewish Community Watch organization was a powerful and eye-opening event, which highlighted the effects of child abuse on its victims and educated participants about abusers.

Participants were called upon by MC Zvi Gluck, director of operations of Zaka International, to stand up and take action to prevent abuse against children, because "any precious soul that is lost is on the hands of those who did nothing to stop it."

Benny Forer, a Deputy District Attorney for LA County who is on the board of the Jewish Community Watch organization, related surprising facts about accusations against an alleged abuser.

"People say it's a 'he said, she said' situation, that one person makes an accusation and it ruins a life," he said. "Not true. There are many steps taken and extensive investigation" before anyone is arrested, he said, noting that only 20% of the cases in California are filed, while the rest are rejected for lack of evidence to prosecute.

Brooklyn's recently elected District Attorney Ken Thompson made an appearance, telling the crowd that he is "determined to keep everyone in Brooklyn safe, and treat everyone fairly - and protect all of our children."

An emotional speech was given by a young woman who is a survivor of abuse, who urged victims to remember, "it's not you who should be ashamed, but the animal who did this to you."

"It may take millions of tears, but you will survive," she said, to a standing ovation.

Renowned orator Rabbi YY Jacobson spoke passionately about the organization, saying that he attended the event to "ask forgiveness for the fact that so many of us have ignored, willingly or inadvertently, the silent cry of so many young beautiful souls whose lives have been affected, and sometimes shattered" by abuse.

Rabbi Jacobson implored victims not to remain silent any longer. "Speak up, we will not blame you," he said. "Speak up - you will be embraced. And you will be loved," he said.

Other speakers included Eli Nash, a survivor of abuse, psychologist Rabbi Benzion Twerski, Yocheved Sidoff, founder of Lamplighters Yeshiva and Chaim Drizin, marriage and family therapist.

The event marked the relaunch of the organization, founded and directed by Meyer Seewald, after it halted operations a year ago due to lack of funding. A crowd-funding campaign in July helped raise $150,000 in 24 hours to cover a major portion of JCW’s annual budget enabling it to recommence its services. 

SEE VIDEO AND MANY MORE PHOTOS:
http://collive.com/show_news.rtx?id=32019&alias=hundreds-at-event-against-abuse

Of Batei Din, Girls Seminaries, Vulnerable People and the Internet, Part 6

Guest post by RaP

An urgent appeal to parents of frum girls in the English-speaking world:

HOW  ATTENDING  SEMINARIES  IN  ISRAEL  BY  FRUM  GIRLS  CONTRIBUTES  TO  THEIR  'SHIDDUCH  CRISIS'  OR,  WHY  YOU  MUST  STOP  SUPPORTING  SEMINARISTAN!

Dear parents, you are being taken for the rides of your lives by the owners of seminaries in Israel who treat them as pure cash-cows rather than getting real jobs for themselves, and by unscrupulous rabbis who need to breed and brainwash innocent frum girls into thinking that they "need" to become ultra-frum zombies in order to marry and support full-time Torah learning boys which most of the girls will never do!

Think of this: Do your fellow frum parents in Israel ever dream of sending their daughters away from home to far away America, which surely lots of the girls would love as fully-paid one year vacations in American seminaries as some sort of "higher" preparation in life for some "higher" calling of getting to know the world in order to know how to better live in it?

Obviously NOT!!!

So why have you dear English-speaking parents fallen into this trap and craze of offering up your daughters on altars of tourism and fun-seeking, which is all that the year in Israel will amount to for your daughter at the end of the day, when the same type of parents like yourselves in Israel would never in a thousand years even dream in the middle of the night to pack up all their daughters as they graduate high school and ship them off the equal distance you do but in reverse, to America, where they could after all learn about the special Torah-lifestyle of American religious Jews which so many admire and speak so highly of in Israel?!

So you will say, there is the Kosel and the Kever Rochel over there! Great! But there is also big city life, traffic, shopping malls, and the same or better level of technology there. It's a concrete jungle like anywhere else. You think there aren't holy places and graves of holy people to visit in America? There are plenty of famous righteous roshei yeshiva and rebbes buried in America! There are plenty of holy sites in USA Jewish cities and cemeteries in New York, Chicago, Boston, Baltimore, Los Angeles, etc!

What? All of a sudden Boro Park, Lakewood, Monroe, Monsey, Flatbush, Golders Green etc are not "holy" enough for you? You think Bnai Brak, Meah Shearim, Bayit Vegan, Har Nof etc are better for your daughter? Sure Eretz Yisrael is the true Holy Land. If it is so important then YOU go live there! When your daughter gets married let her move there with her husband as a couple. Why does she need to be there as a single girl as if in a movie of a "Roman Holiday" as if she was an "Audrey Hepburn" lehavdil having a ball!

You know why the Israeli parents don't send their daughters, or their sons, to learn in the good old USA??

 Because they are NOT  STUPID!! They are not idiots about money! Do you know what Israeli Charedi Jews of all kinds do for their daughters instead?? You know quite well if you think about it... they don't ship them off anywhere, they keep their precious blood and flesh virgins at home, but they do go about RAISING  MONEY  FROM  YOU to make sure they can buy a new apartment ("dira") for their daughter/s when she gets married, they raise and save money to make sure that the apartment/s their daughter's will live in soon enough as they get married at 17, 18 or 19, 20 the latest, will have furniture, linens, dishes, pots and pans and all the appliances like washing machines and ovens and refrigerators and all that's needed by a young newly-wed couple to get going in life. Most importantly they make sure that their daughters will be mentally and practically prepared for the hard chores and realities of marriage!!!

No chalomos only tachlis!

Not so you and your daughter as you prepare to send her off to Israel for a year. First you put your daughters' minds out of commission by getting them all hyped up about a fancy all-expenses-paid-year-vacation-and-tour in far off Israel. You spend your money on travel agents and tickets, on massive deposits and tuitions to the greedy and rapacious (in more than one sense) owners of the seminaries, you waste your money on buying your daughter fall wardrobes, winter wardrobes, and then for the spring and next summer, after all she cannot wear just two or three dresses that Yerushalmi girls wear because those Yerushalmi girls are neither spoiled nor stupid, they know that if their parents are smart and able they are saving every penny up to buy her an apartment that costs a few hundred thousand dollars in Israel.

Let's face it, any girl is at her physical prime when she turns 17, 18, 19. By the time she turns 20 she is already a young woman and no longer a child. Parents like yourself in Israel of frum girls KNOW this. They know that because for MARRIAGE to be the real goal it is important to get your daughter into shidduchim EARLIER and NOT later!! By you sending her off to Israel at 18, and prior to that at 17 she is already day-dreaming about going to Israel, then getting all that baloney stuffed into her brain when she is 18 or 19, she then comes home to the USA at 20 and is ready ...for...what?... exactly???

She needs another year to DE-PROGRAM from Israel if she can even do that. If she wants to stay on in Israel and make Aliyah then kol hakavod to her! But you won't let her, right?

So it's all a big tease for her and a self-made disaster for you! So let's say she spends her eighteenth or nineteenth year in Israel, which means she has to then spend her subsequent nineteenth or twentieth year depressurizing from the high she is on to get back to real life in America. During all this time she has taken herself out of the shidduch market when she could be using the best years of her life, with your help of course, to find her bashert, but because you have enabled her to become a high-roller she is not prepared for life or marriage. Her first "encounter" with life is that she got a one year vacation in Israel that is NOT a preparation for marriage, motherhood, running a home, facing childbirth and children, managing a budget, shopping and on top of that maybe even take a job.

So no wonder many girls fear marriage! They don't want the responsibilities of real-life in the real-world because they have been programmed for something else to be in space where all the idealism in the world doesn't help anyone run a day to day home with its regular humdrum routines.

 So no wonder so many girls are single, or in massive new numbers now they get divorced because they don't have a clue about marriage and real responsibility and self-sacrifice. And sadly many of their husbands, bochurim and singles in yeshivas are also clueless and spoiled by the unreality of their upbringing and lifestyle!

More and more of your daughters are opting to remain single and are not finding good dates, into their late 20s, 30s and even 40s, just read all the Jewish magazines like Mishpacha and AMI for all the stories about this stuff that everyone is shouting about but not solving! Some become lesbians (she may have been inducted into this by her "FRUM" girlfriends in the seminaries!), some drop out of formal Yiddishkeit and some, well it's just a nightmare that goes under the heading of "SHIDDUCH  CRISIS" and the related "OFF  THE  DERECH" (OTD) plague, all from good intentions by nice people like YOU who enabled it!

Before your daughter flies off to Israel on that shiny El Al plane, you will have to buy fancy new suitcases for the princess's trip to Israel, she can't travel or be seen with your or her old worn-out travel bags. She will then pack her bags with every last hairconditioner, shampoo, makeup, fancy lingerie, expensive shoes, stockings, and even lots of foods and toiletries that she has heard are not to be had in the Holy Land or are just too inferior for her royal highness's royal derriere! Can you imagine Israeli frum parents doing this for THEIR daughters? Never in a million years! All your Israeli counterparts and their daughters are thinking is "A dira (apartment), A dira, A dira" every penny must be saved for the Chasuna and the all important Dira!

What kind of preparation is it for life that your daughters start out with the expectation that you "owe" them a year in Israel for fun and games? What have they done to deserve this? And why do they deserve or need this year in Israel experience? Have you wasted all your tuition money on the twelve years of schooling your daughter should have had until now? What was missing from the chinuch and Torah education she received from her local bais yaakov and Jewish day school that she still "needs" a year in Israel? How come the same type of girls in Israel don't "need" or get or are entitled to a free year of study in America? Don't you get what a rip-off you are being subjected to?

Not just that but with the current sexual abuse scandal in the four seminaries owned by Elimelech Meisels a veil of lies and hypocrisy have been ripped from this whole seminary charade, that there are plenty of sexual predators and their enablers who own, man and prowl the seminaries. They can be anyone from the head honcho rabbi like Elimelech Meisels, his co-rabbis, his lady employees and even fellow-students who because they are under an evil spell become typical groupies as if they were in a "Charles Manson" cult and will at times join in the cult-leader's depravities, protect the cult-leader from outside accusations out of a sense of false loyalty, and cover up for him as if they were protecting a mafia don.

This is where you want to send your daughters?

And in Israel the people who run seminaries and "inspire" the girls are all ideological nut-jobs that would never get such jobs in the USA where parents can and should supervise their kids, and even then it's not failsafe, but if you are a good parent and your daughter lives at home and is loyal to you and the family you should be able to have a better handle to prevent and stop any trouble. If you can't do it at home, then oy, how will you do it or how will it get done five thousand plus miles away in far off  Seminaristan!

But you poor dear parents have become slaves to an idea that you do not need, that you do subscribe to really and that in the end works quickly against you as your daughter with her idealistic American energy and idealism is viewed as a lump of clay to be over-written and over-ridden (in other senses sometimes as well) and have her true personality erased and an artificial crazy persona installed that says like a dummy "I want a Kollel guy, I want a Kollel, I want a Kollel guy" as if she was now in need of life-support and an elixir of life. Just how crazy is that?

P.S.

In case you think that the latest seminary scandal has died down, it has not, if anything it has moved into an even more serious phase as lawyers have gotten involved in addition to all the rabbis and dayanim and batei din. See this quote from recent correspondence that has been published on the Internet:

"SPECIAL BEIS DIN

Chicago, IL

September 4, 2014

Re: Pninim, Binas Bais Yaakov, Chedvas Bais Yaakov, & Keser Chaya

Dear Aron Twersky  Esq: 

We write in response to the questions that you, as attorney for the seminaries identified above...Between mid-April and mid-May 2014, former students of seminaries associated with Elimelech Meisels...alleged, and subsequently testified before the Beis Din, that she had been the victim of inappropriate conduct including unwanted physical contact of a sexual nature, by Meisels.

The Beis Din then summoned Meisels to appear, which he did. Meisels ultimately confessed before the Beis Din to the victims allegations of misconduct. He also confessed to having engaged in other misconduct, and prepared...a list of multiple additional victims. Some of the misconduct to which he confessed constitutes to our understanding 'sexual violence' as that term is understood in the context of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 ('Title IX'), 20 U.S.C. 1681 et seq.

The Beis Din also received evidence...that some staff members (i) were aware of both specific instances of misconduct and, more generally, gross violations of the norms of behavior in seminaries, and (ii) enabled this behavior by failing to take action to stop it...

Sincerely,

Rabbi Gedalia Dov Shwartz

Senior Dayan

cc:

Touro College

Hebrew Theological College"

The above is just a small fraction from a lengthy four page letter that details the horrors of the four seminaries fiasco under (ha!) Elimelech Meisels!

These seminaries, and no doubt many if not all the others are actually more like stealthy hushed up frat houses and no better than a covert covered up coed dorm at secular colleges where there are NO real barriers between sexual interactions between the male and female students be it heterosexual or homosexual.

So please dear parents, think it over, and ask yourselves how you came to buy into such a destructive and sick system?

It's time to put the covert wild west culture of the Seminaristans out of action.

Build schools and programs for your daughters in your home cities! You can then sit on the board of directors. Watch your daughters' progress first hand. SAVE  MONEY FOR  WEDDINGS and APARTMENTS for your daughters LIKE  THE  ISRAELI  FRUM  PARENTS  DO (they're not stupid!) and get her to start dating earlier that will save her and you lots of years of tears and agony in the long run!

Remember:

The road to hell is paved with good intentions !

“I see vaccinations as the problem,” Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetzky told the Baltimore Jewish Times in a story published in late August. “It’s a hoax. Even the Salk [polio] vaccine is a hoax. It’s just big business.”

One of the country’s (most prominent?) ultra-Orthodox rabbis has condemned vaccines as a “hoax” in an interview with a local Jewish newspaper.

“I see vaccinations as the problem,” Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetzky told the Baltimore Jewish Times in a story published in late August. “It’s a hoax. Even the Salk [polio] vaccine is a hoax. It’s just big business.”

Kamenetzky argued that schools should not exclude unvaccinated students, as they currently do under public health laws. He also claimed that school janitors would be spreading disease if vaccines worked. “They are mostly Mexican and are unvaccinated,” the rabbi said. “If there was a problem, the children would already have gotten sick.”

Kamenetzky is dean of the Talmudical Yeshiva of Philadelphia and a member of the rabbinical board that guides Agudath Israel of America, the leading ultra-Orthodox umbrella organization. He spoke at the umbrella group’s annual gala in May. His wife, Temi Kamenetzky, gives lectures opposing vaccines.

Other prominent opponents of childhood vaccinations include former Playboy Playmate and talk show host Jenny McCarthy and Alicia Silvertsone, star of the 1995 film “Clueless.” The Centers for Disease Control says there is no link between vaccines and the development of autism, one common fear.

While Kamenetzky’s opposition to vaccinations does not appear to be widespread among the ultra-Orthodox, he’s also not alone.

“It’s a matter of some contention, but that’s true of the broader society as well,” said Rabbi Dovid Zwiebel, executive director of Agudath Israel. “There is a small, but not insignificant, part of the populace that is persuaded that vaccination can be a dangerous thing… Some rabbis may be part of that population also.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/22/from-clueless-to-clueless-alicia-silverstone-s-the-kind-mama.html

Zwiebel's group has not taken a position on vaccines.

A 2013 measles outbreak that sickened dozens in ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in Boro Park and Williamsburg was caused, in part, by ultra-Orthodox parents who had refused to vaccinate their children, according to an alert issued by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

Rabbi Moshe Tendler, a senior faculty member at Yeshiva University’s rabbinical school and an expert on bioethics, said that some rabbinic sources argue that rabbis should not make medical decisions. 

“This is an area in which medicine has made such tremendous progress for the benefit of humanity,” Tendler said. “I believe that there may very well be rabbis who agree with Kamenetsky, but they are not speaking under their authority as rabbis, they are speaking simply as uninformed laymen... 

Read more: http://forward.com/articles/205615/prominent-orthodox-rabbi-condemns-vaccines-as-a-ho/#ixzz3DDbEzubM

“SEXUAL ABUSE, SHONDA AND CONCEALMENT IN ORTHODOX JEWISH COMMUNITIES,” by Michael Lesher.

 SPECIAL PRICE NOW FROM McFarland $29.99. 

Kindle Edition From Amazon now $16.49

http://www.amazon.com/Sexual-Shonda-Concealment-Orthodox-Communities/dp/0786471255/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407608375&sr=1-1&keywords=sexual+abuse%2C+shonda+and+concealment

“SEXUAL ABUSE, SHONDA AND CONCEALMENT IN ORTHODOX JEWISH COMMUNITIES,” by Michael Lesher. 

In Hebrew Scripture, prophets often resist the divine call. Their prophetic job description is superhuman. They will be scorned and their message fiercely denounced by the very people they must reach. Indeed, prophets take upon themselves the full weight of shame and scandal they protest.

The Yiddish word shonda has this double meaning of a “shameful act” and the “public exposure of scandalous information,” as attorney Michael Lesher sets forth in his book, “Sexual Abuse, Shonda and Concealment in Orthodox Jewish Communities.”

Lesher has met adamant resistance to his work because of the unwelcome exposure it brings to his own people and to those rabbis who want their unquestioned power to dominate even secular government. But he accepts the prophetic mantle and insists “there can be no legitimate role for a rabbinic court in any sex abuse investigation.”

He argues passionately for the powerless, such as an Orthodox infant who died at three months in Israel because his young father took offense at a defect in the baby’s neck muscles. He bit, punched and threw his imperfect son against a wall. The father showed no remorse, rabbis declared him innocent, religious people paid for his defense, and ultra-Orthodox mobs rioted against the “bigotry” of civic authorities that deigned to judge one of their members.

In such a world, Lesher asks, what hope is there for children raped by Orthodox rabbis and teachers? With prosecutorial precision, he cites well-documented cases that expose the self-righteous façade of Jewish Orthodoxy from Jerusalem to New Jersey.

Lesher recognizes that civil authorities fear being charged with anti-Semitism, and the secular press tiptoes around the issue. He shows how an Orthodox-run nonprofit agency, working with Brooklyn’s politically motivated district attorney, systematically betrayed sex-abuse victims while sheltering their assailants.

Lesher writes that religious street patrols serve as enforcers: “Orthodox rabbis prefer their communities to be governed by a police force answerable to rabbinic rather than municipal authority.”

Anyone familiar with child sex-abuse cases will recognize the knee-jerk defense strategy of blaming “scorned wives and dysfunctional children.”

Lesher shows the added dimension of religious mind-control so absolute that “no Jew raised in the rabbinic tradition” would consider “acting as an individual in any matter whatsoever.”

Under Orthodox law, if a Jew threatens to inform on another Jew to gentile authorities, the whole community must use force, even deadly force, to prevent that betrayal.

Lesher notes that youth have been empowered by the Internet and are daring to protest sex abuse on blogs such as “TheUnorthodoxJew.Blogspot.com” He dedicates his compelling plea to his own children with a blessing: “May you contribute to a wiser and better world.”

THE AWESOME REVIEWS ARE POURING IN:

Unorthodox-Jew A Critical View of Orthodox Judaism: "Sexual Abuse, Shonda and Concealment in Orthodox Jewish Communities is a call to all charged with protecting children from abuse to refuse to appease powerful rabbis who try to prevent child sexual abuse cases from being reported and investigated."

http://theunorthodoxjew.blogspot.com/2014/08/sexual-abuse-shonda-and-concealment-in.html

http://jewishbusinessnews.com/2014/09/07/michael-leshers-book-exposes-shanda-of-sexual-abuse-in-orthodox-communities/

http://www.providencejournal.com/features/entertainment/books/20140907-book-review-a-powerful-plea-for-victims-of-sexual-abuse.ece

http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-7125-6

Anne Grant (ParentingProject@verizon.net), a retired pastor, was executive director of the Women’s Center of Rhode Island and writes about public policies that harm victims of abuse.

“The ‘Them Vs. Us’ Shtetl Mentality Protects Sexual Predators:”

Child sex abuse: Why does the Jewish community tolerate it?

We must shift our interest from protecting the reputations of abusers and their institutions to helping abused children and preventing potential victims.

By Rabbi Yehoshua Looks / Jewish World blogger

As I read the article, all I could think was, not again. ”Nineteen former students of a Manhattan high school run by Yeshiva University have filed a $380 million lawsuit against Yeshiva University accusing administrators and teachers of covering up decades of physical and sexual abuse.”

The courts decided  they will not hear this case (updated), which alleges abuse dating back some 40 years, for in New York cases of child sexual abuse must be brought before a victim’s 23rd birthday. According to the Forward, the lawyer representing the alleged victims argues that the statute of limitations does not apply because Yeshiva University fraudulently covered up the abuse. For us, the Torah has no statute of limitations on liability. It is never too late to address the problems of sexual abuse in our community, and to take affirmative action to prevent it.

Irwin Zalkin, a preeminent litigator in abuse cases wrote in his op-ed, “The ‘Them Vs. Us’ Shtetl Mentality Protects Sexual Predators:”

“The sexual abuse of children in our society is a national epidemic. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that 1-in-4 girls and 1-in-6 boys will be sexually abused by the time they are 18 years old. This is not a problem unique to the Orthodox Jewish Community, it crosses all social, religious and economic strata of our society.”

That this issue is prevalent across social, economic and religious bounds does not make it any less troublesome as we grapple with abuse in our own - Jewish - backyard. When cases like Yeshiva University and countless others like it come to light, we, as a community, must engage in serious introspection. And when rabbis - colleagues that we respect and admire – are involved, this cannot compromise our response.

The case of Yeshiva University High School for Boys reminds me of what happened with Baruch Lanner, a former high school principal and director of regions for the Orthodox Union’s National Conference of Synagogue Youth. When the story by Gary Rosenblatt of the Jewish Weekbroke in 2000, Lanner was accused of abusing numerous children that had been entrusted to his care during a period of more than 30 years. He was convicted in 2002 of sexually abusing two teenage girls at the high school where he was the principal, according to the New York Times.

In both the Lanner and Yeshiva University cases, rabbis and administrators allegedly protected the perpetrators, and, in the process, their institutions. In the current instance, after being allowed to quietly leave Yeshiva University and being honored at a farewell dinner, one of the named rabbis, Rabbi George Finkelstein, moved on to become a principal in another school and later became the director general of a synagogue. According to the Forward, Finkelstein was accused of further abuse while serving both of those roles.

The synagogue board, prior to hiring the rabbi, heard rumors and checked with an “authority” at Yeshiva University, the Forward reported, and twice the synagogue was reassured that the concerns were baseless. This was in 2001, within a year of when the Lanner case broke, the scandalous details of which were widely circulated in the Orthodox community.

In the words of the great Spanish philosopher George Santayana, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Thus, we, as a community, must take these cases as a sign that it is time for soul searching, and ask, why do we tolerate child abuse?

Of course there are the monetary concerns associated with an institution’s damaged reputation. But putting that aside, there is also the misguided application of the halakhic principle “moser,” informing on another Jew to non-Jewish authorities. According to the Rambam, Maimonides, moser is usually done for financial benefit or to curry favor - neither of those are even remotely applicable in these cases.

The inescapable conclusion is that we are somehow able to rationalize child abuse as less than devastating and truly harmful to our children. And by we, I mean men. In many cases of documented abuse in religious communities, it isn’t women in positions of power deciding not to report acts of sexual abuse on defenseless children; it’s men. Studies are inconclusive, but it appears that the vast majority of child molesters are men, while only a small percentage are women, according to the National Council on Child Abuse and Family Violence.

Perhaps at some deep level, Jungian psychology suggests, males traditionally identify with the perpetrator and resist empathy with the victim. Each of us has a dark side that we keep hidden - even from ourselves. But when there is documented child abuse, the concern has to be for the abused children and potential victims, not the perpetrators.

In coming to terms with his own silence as a student at the Yeshiva University high school, Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky writes, “But what must be obvious to us now is that it is both folly in practical terms, and corrupt in spiritual terms to think that we are in any way strengthening Judaism through turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the cries of the innocent. Indeed, if Judaism means anything at all, only the precise opposite could possibly be true.”

What should we do to stop tolerating sexual abuse of our children? Rabbi Kanefsky put out a call to his YU classmates to offer their own apologies to those whose distress they ignored. The Rabbinical Council of America, at their recent convention, issued strong guidelines for preventing future cases of abuse. I would add to their list that we can insist that women are included in the oversight committees of organizations that deal with internal review of abuse and harassment issues.

It is now long past the time to realize that sexual predators do not stop until they are stopped. Above all, we must acknowledge that no matter the position of respect and authority that a colleague may hold, nothing can compromise our love and responsibility for all the children entrusted to our care.

Rabbi Yehoshua Looks is a teacher and a freelance consultant to non-profit organizations. Jul. 18, 2013 

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/rabbis-round-table/.premium-1.536561

“I worked for the guy 16 years,” he said on the phone. “He’s the most kaddushdikeh (holy) guy.”

Bodenheimer's  Ramapo Police Mugshot

This 'Holy Guy'—and Grandfather of 100—Is Accused of Sexually Abusing a Student

An ultra-Orthodox elementary school principal has been accused of sexual abuse, but accusations of physical abuse go back much further.

In an ultra-Orthodox enclave of upstate New York, a former student has accused a principal of sex acts. But amid the allegations of sexual abuse, allegations of physical abuse have also begun to resurface. Rabbi Gavriel Bodenheimer, the principal of Bais Mikroh, a Yeshiva in Monsey for grades K-8, was arraigned on Aug. 12 and charged with three counts of criminal sexual acts and one count of sex abuse. Bodenheimer, who is 71 and a father of 14 and grandfather of 100, faces a maximum sentence of 25 years.

The abuse allegedly began when the accuser was 7 years old, in August 2009, and went on for a year, until July 2010. According to the charges, the sexual acts took place in Bodenheimer’s office at Bais Mikroh, where the boy was a student. The accuser and his mother went to the police in December 2013. A police investigation to establish probable cause took eight months, according to Lieutenant Emma at the Ramapo Police Department, who says the arrest was publicized in the hope that more victims will come forward.

But Bodenheimer’s lawyer, Deborah Wolikow-Loewenberg, said on the phone that her client is not guilty. He denies all the allegations and is proceeding to trial.

“There’s not a scintilla of corroboration on the case,” said another lawyer for Bodenheimer, Kenneth Gribetz. “It’s complete nonsense.” On a taped phone call between Bodenheimer and his accuser, Bodenheimer called his accuser crazy, according to Gribetz, and even told his accuser to go to the police if he has a complaint.

When reached by phone, Bodenheimer declined to comment except to say, “The whole thing is ridiculous.”

Another rabbi at the school, Rabbi Shamai Blobstein, confirmed that the allegation is not being taken very seriously at Bais Mikroh. When asked if the school had been shaken up by the allegations against its principal, he said, “They’re laughing,” and that people pitied Bodenheimer but only for his lawyers’ fees. As to whether the allegations have any merit, Blobstein said there was “no way” Bodenheimer could have sexually molested his accuser. “I worked for the guy 16 years,” he said on the phone. “He’s the most kaddushdikeh (holy) guy.”

Bodenheimer is very respected in his community, where other friends also cast doubt on the veracity of the allegations and the credibility of the accuser.

“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.”

But younger members of the community who encountered the man as a principal had a different tale to tell. While abuse of a sexual nature is new for the principal, accusations of physical abuse have long dogged the school. In 2012, a former student, Shlomo Silber, wrote a harrowing blog post chronicling the physical abuse he endured at Bais Mikroh, including being smacked, punched and kicked by Bodenheimer. 

He recalled one event, when he was playing with a friend, Areah, when the principal came outside and found them. “By this point I knew what was coming,” Silver writes. “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.”

Silver also described another teacher at the school whose punishment method involved tickling. From the comments on the blog post, it seems like many former students endured similar ordeals. Silver, who attended the school from 1990 to 1998 and dropped out before graduating, was pressured by members of the community to retract the blog post, but he refused. One of the comments on the blog post is from Blobstein: “He’s a very nice boy but was not an easy student from day one,” Blobstein wrote of Silver. “Bais Mikra tried very hard with him. He should appreciate it. Now if he had problems, and felt he was abused he had me or the Rabbi in his Shul to discuss it with. Not to air it publicly. I think he should publicly apologize for publicly airing his views.”

When I spoke to him, Blobstein insisted that if Bodenheimer ever hit a child, it was done “with love.” Bodenheimer refused to comment on the allegations of physical abuse.

When asked if he thought that sexual abuse might have also been part of Bodenheimer’s repertoire of abuse, Silver responded, “Anything’s possible these days although I don’t personally know of any sexual abuse case. I obviously know of much emotional and physical abuse.”Another former student, Barry Lambert, who attended Bais Mikroh from 1989 to 1993, said that while Bodenheimer’s peers may respect him, not a single child who graduated from Bais Mikroh thought of Bodenheimer as a pillar of the community. “It was an extremely abusive atmosphere from the moment that I started there until the moment I left,” he said on the phone. “I suffered from physical abuse from all of the rabbis I had there as teachers as well as from Rabbi Bodenheimer himself. … He would use hitting as a punishment on a regular basis.” 

Lambert does not recall this physical abuse as “loving.” He remembered one day when Rabbi Bodenheimer came outside during recess. He came up behind a student and hit him on the head. When the child turned around and wondered why he had been hit, it turned out that Bodenheimer had mistaken him for another child. “But you must have done something to deserve it,” Lambert recalled Bodenheimer saying before he walked off. “The abuse was not out of love or caring,” Lambert said. “I never felt that way. It was more a matter of, that was the only way any of them knew how to discipline and without that they didn’t have the control that they wanted or the responsiveness they wanted from the students.”

Still, Lambert says, he was surprised to hear about the allegations of sexual abuse. “It doesn’t sound right to me,” he said. “As much as I have a strong dislike and distaste for the man—I don’t think he should be in charge of that school or any school for that matter—but the allegations are difficult to believe… Obviously, anything is possible.” 

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/09/this-holy-guy-and-grandfather-of-100-is-accused-of-sexually-abusing-a-student.html

Of Batei Din, Girls Seminaries, Vulnerable People and the Internet, Part 5

Guest post by RaP

An open letter to Jewish parents of daughters in North America, more: 

Dear parents, like many people with seminary-age girls you must be very worried, anxious, puzzled, confused, betrayed, angry, resentful maybe even in a gambling mood that all will be well, or you have made a paradigm shift in your thinking and have come down on the side of sanity by not sending your daughter away to far off Israel when she could accomplish everything you want for her in safety closer to home. Whatever your choices have been or will be you are not to be envied.

On the one hand is the reality that you are up against a craze that has taken hold of the yeshivish and even not so yeshivish communities whereby young post-high school girls feel it is their "right" to have an all-expenses-paid year of fun-time in Israel with multiple trips back home for Yom Tov and Simchas as the need may be. What a life that is! What a way to rip off parents by kids who have never had to work hard for a dime in their lives. They live with the expectation that you "owe" them this year of fun in the Holy Land as if was free time on your expense account at the Riviera or Disneyland.

You ask yourself, if you even have a moment to catch your breath, how did we ever get here? How did this type of thinking ever set in? Was it brought over from the old country in Europe by the Bubbies and Zeidies? Was that how frum Jewish life was lived for so many decades with an explicit assumption that your daughters would "demand" to be part of mass waves of migrating nightingales after their oh-so "difficult" years of fun and games at the best summer camps, winter vacations, fancy Pesachs, and trips galore all over America and the world for all sorts of brief breaks between this and that? After all, being spoiled takes lots of effort and practice and needs its rewards! For girls it is not easy modeling themselves on carefree celebrities and egoistic entertainment icons.

And the biggest question of all, how did a year in Israel for frum girls become a "pre-requisite" for shidduchim as if without it a girl would be looked at as "missing" her nose or her brains? You may rightly ask those kind of questions, that is if your kids even give you the time to think about life as you slave away to earn a living to support the kind of royalty and celebrity lifestyle that you probably never had yourselves!

The following may save you the time to think about all the above, as it would in any case depress you if you got to think about it too much. You have bigger things to worry about, like paying your mortgage and bills, tuitions, Yom Tov expenses, car rentals, go to work and produce, manage your business/es, and so on. But don't be fooled about why you wake up in the mornings and go to work, it is to support your sheifalach and darling meidel that is the apple of your eye. So let's take a tour through recent history to see how we probably got here.

This may come as a great shock and surprise to many people but not so long ago frum girls were absolutely not allowed to leave home even on supervised trips far away from home to foreign countries for a year or two. Such things were out of the question. But then some time in the late 1960s and 1970s the Kollel trend was starting to catch on.

Good bochurim were persuaded by their rebbeim and roshei yeshiva to abandon plans of going to college and become full-time Torah learners instead. Part of this plan required that there also be a supply of equally committed frum girls who would be willing to become Kollel wives and support their husbands in learning while they would be so committed to Torah idealism that they would add being the breadwinner to the titles of wife and mother. That was the time when the need for masses of Kollel wives was beginning to be thought of by some roshei yeshiva. But such wives could not just come from the few Torah homes of rabbis and special people who would go along with it. Mass production was called for and a kind of unofficial master plan had to be thought of.

So if we had to pinpoint the point and people who started this trend, when was it and who were they? Feel free to add your own ideas or reject these and come up with your own alternatives of how we got here, but the following is borne out by what really happened.

In around 1970 two major things happened in the seminary world in relation to girls in English-speaking countries and as it relates to what grew out of it. The first was the rise of the baal/as teshuva movement of the late 1950s and 1960s. By 1970 the first and most famous campus for English-speaking newly religious young women was founded in Jerusalem, it was and is still known as NEVE  YERUSHALAYIM and it had wonderful goals, to give a higher Jewish education for those who never had it and make secular women into very Orthodox even Haredi woman. It was for a special group and it worked for many. Over time its success was not lost on entrepreneurs in America who saw it as a model for setting up seminaries to educate regular religious girls.

After all, if a seminary in Israel for baalas teshuvas could do so much, how much more so would seminaries for already religious girls do to turn them into super-students and of course there was money to made in this new field. New seminaries could be set up as affiliates of local seminaries, even connected with colleges with official credits recognized and the right to get various private and government donations and grants from the USA and Israel and from rich people. Many founders of such schools have grown very wealthy and powerful from these ventures -- and with that success has come corruption and decadence as is now open for all to see with the Elimelech Meisels four seminaries scandal that has focused much-needed attention on these shady operations.

So that was one set of influences, but not the most important. Probably the key seminary and trend-setter in the American yeshiva world has been the establishment and influence of the famous elite BJJ (Beth Jacob of Jerusalem) seminary founded and still run by its head, the only daughter of the late rosh yeshiva of Yeshiva Chaim Berlin in Brooklyn Rabbi Yitzchok Hutner (RYH), Rebbetzin Dr. Bruria Hutner David (RBD).

Armed with a PhD in Jewish Studies from Columbia University, a brilliant brain, and with her father's formidable training and guidance, Rebbetzin David is married to the mysterious Rabbi Yonasan David (RYD) who heads the Pachad Yitzchok Yeshiva founded by RYH in Jerusalem.

After the 1967 Six Day War RYH, RBD, RYD made the commitment to leave Brooklyn and re-settle in Israel. They travelled back and forth in this mission splitting their time between America and Israel. In 1970 they were on one of the planes that was hijacked to Jordan by the Black September terrorist group. They narrowly escaped serious harm, but they redoubled their resolve to build their base in Jerusalem.

Of the three, RBD has been the most successful by making BJJ the must-go-to-place for any serious frum girl who had/has plans of marrying a serious ben Torah and becoming a Torah teacher or wife of a rabbi or Kollel husband or all of those. This was a trend for the elite, but at some point it became the model for virtually all girls in the English-speaking yeshiva world even if they lacked the idealism, brains and knowledge that was required and still is of all BJJ candidates.

Somewhere over the decades the BJJ model was adopted and commercialized and made into a popular culture must-do attraction for all frum girls in the yeshivish world, maybe because a growing number of teachers and staff were BJJ-influenced and graduates. As the 1980s and 1990s came along the craze caught on, parents like yourselves started making more money, and the mass migrations of girls to Israel went into full swing as it still has into the 2000s and the 2010s...Until now in 2014 when the entire undertaking has rightly been called into question by the revelations of what had been going on in four such seminaries for the fun-loving frum girls of America.

Another institution that contributed to the trend was the famous MICHLALA institution in Israel that was more Zionistic and academic. But that was a program that was much more like a college-level education with serious lecturers and also for serious girls. Both BJJ and MICHLALA were very for very mature students only. While NEVE was for serious secular or more modern girls who wanted to become more religious and Haredi. They were great for the culture of the 1960s and 1970s and even into the 1980s when those girls who wanted to learn more about Torah and Judaism were usually more serious and earnest.

But from sometime into the 1980s through the 1990s to the present the requirement for "seriousness of purpose" was dumped in favor of the mass market mentality of hey everyone, they're (that means you dear parents) giving out free trips to Israel for a year all expenses paid so let's ALL go and have us some big-time fun, fun, fun!!!

The only problem is that while all girls are always vulnerable, but for girls who mainly want to have fun and games who are just not serious students by an measure this could be and has become a deadly trap and decoy and recipe for disaster luring them into the hands of unscrupulous sexual predator teachers, rabbis and even fellow-students, masters of grooming victims, isolating and trapping the vulnerable sheep in their flocks, and waiting for the right moment of loneliness and need to be loved, in order to pounce and extract their literal "pound of flesh" from the unsuspecting girls, some of which should never have been allowed to leave home under such circumstances in the first place.

Another trend that has contributed to frum girls assuming they have it owed to them to be sent to Israel, is that it has now become the standard de rigueur practice for almost all of their brothers and boys their age to go to yeshivas in Israel after high school some time. Yet another factor has been the rise in secular Jewish society of promoting free trips to Israel for college-age students in order to strengthen their Jewish identity.

Dear parents, presumably you are in the majority whose daughters do NOT study Talmud and therefore they do not need a few years of studying Gemora at a yeshiva in Israel. Your daughters are NOT becoming Jewish studies teachers and many will not even marry "forever" Kollel learning types so why brainwash your daughters with these kinds of ideals she will not practice or want and does not need?

 Your daughter is presumably already religious and likes and enjoys Yiddishkeit therefore she does not need a year in Israel to make her even more farmfrumt. Ever heard of "kol hamosif gorei'a" ("if it ain't broke, don't fix it")"! And your daughter is not secular by any means because she is like you and therefore she does not need artificial doses and fake overlays of Jewish idealism and knowledge implanted by charlatans and Rasputins, since she has already learned all she needs to know in her bais yaakovs or good Jewish day schools.

So please dear parents, re-think your plans, do not succumb to dangerous and artificial social-engineering plans. Your daughter will find her bashert and live happily ever-after without risking herself and your good family name in far-off Israel.

Keep your daughter close to home until she is ready to leave and get married with the help of Hashem, and give your hard-earned charity to Jewish education for post-high school girls closer to home!

P.S.
In case you forgot or are not aware of what the current fuss is all about, this is the letter that broke open this scandal of what goes on in some girls seminaries:

"SPECIAL BEIS DIN

Chicago, IL

July 10, 2014

The Special Beis Din of Chicago has convened to address allegations of improper conduct, including unwanted physical contact of a sexual nature, between Elimelech Meisels and students of the following seminaries with which he is affiliated: Pninim, Binas Bais Yaakov, Chedvas Bais Yaakov, and Keser Chaya.

Based on the testimony received by the Beis Din, including testimony by the claimants and by Elimelch Meisels, the Beis Din believes that students in these seminaries are at risk of harm and it does not recommend that prospective students attend these seminaries....

Rabbis Gedalia Dov Schwartz.., Shmuel Fuerst.., Zev Cohen..."

Caveat emptor! (Latin for "Let the buyer beware")!