It’s been over a week since I sat in a movie theater in Atlanta and watched Scott Rosenfelt’s documentary “Standing Silent.”
This is a film that covered the Jewish Times coverage of our investigative series of molestation in the Jewish community.
I sat in the middle of this beautiful theater. The people of the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival could not have been nicer.
There is a huge difference in seeing a film on your 19-inch TV than watching the same film on a movie screen.
Heroes came across in the film. Yacov Margolese, Rabbi Avraham Twersky, Rabbi Yosef Blau, Rabbi Elan Adler, Gennendy Radoff, Tamir Weisberg, our Shofar Coalition Survivor’s group, therapist Lisa Ferentz, the people who spoke on the phone to me who couldn’t come forward publicly and others.
There were many winds blowing in that room those days. The knowledge that the story was out and had been told brought me no relief so much as it did tears. I really do always worry about the small child who goes to bed each night worrying that someone will touch them in a terrible way. This is what moves many of us who write, report and fight this sometimes personal battle.
It’s difficult and complicated, because while you are happy, you are also filled with the anxiety of truth. For the truth that you have found is the very ammunition that your foes shoot you down with.
A lady I know, came up to me in the hallway of the JCC the other night and concerned about my safety asked me if I had a bullet proof vest. She said it out of total support. But to even have to worry about truth leading to danger tells me that there is still something very broken about the very Judaism we all love. Yes, there’s a Judaism of love and spirituality and a Judaism that saves lives.
But it only works when it can stand on a platform of truth, and when it protects its children from the predators that come from deep inside the very institutions we support and are supposed to respect by leaders who have lost their way.
So I believe that the same Hashem who tapped me on the shoulder and taps others on their shoulders and asks us to do tell these stories is the same HaShem who will protect us through all of this.
Long before he died, I paid one of my regular visits to Rabbi Herman Neuberger of Ner Israel Rabbinical College. I went to him for many questions, both personal and professional. I told him that I felt tired, that there were times I didn’t want to be editor so much. He looked me straight in the eye with that look of love and power of his and told me I couldn’t quit. I had to keep doing what I was doing. And he told me to keep telling the truth.
He was right.

At it’s distilled bareness, molestation, specifically molestation of someone who is of a radically younger age than oneself, someone unable to say no and stop the act being committed upon them, is an act of unequal power between two people.  It is an act committed by one who chooses to be in control of another person regardless of the impact it may have upon them, by one who is most likely unable or has chosen not to involve themselves with someone closer in age, experience, maturity, awareness and power. They are not considering the impact it may have on the molested. It is a lazy choice. Whether out of feelings of incompetence, ignorance or fear, reaching out and engaging with someone suitable for a relationship who is of equal power to themselves is an option either long-abandoned or set aside.  Those who are molested are casualties of the molester’s short-sighted, self-centered, careless, rationalized behavior. In the case that it is same-sex, they are most likely too-shamed of their own impulses to pursue an appropriate, consensual homosexual relationship. In the case of it being opposite-sex molestation, the molestor no doubt finds it too painful, complicated, or a hassle to engage consensually, or they feel inept in various possible ways. They are the big man (or woman) in town, when they are in control.  Understanding them is useful in as far as it helps in calling them out for what they are. If it causes life-long pain, sorry molestors-the choice can’t be rationalized as a legitimate act. Nor a shared act. It is a self-serving, imposed one.

What you call “difficult and complicated” I would call courageous and heroic. The thought that anyone would threaten you for bringing to light a truth that in the short and long term will protect children from molestation is horrifying. For anyone to even think of threatening you is shameful and despicable. Phil, what you have done is nothing less than the right and moral thing. Perhaps this is not a “speaking truth to power” situation, but it is certain a “speaking truth to evil” situation. The Jewish community has an ethical obligation to face what has happened—and continues to happen—in our midst, to our children. Once we know the truth—and there is no turning back or pretending we don’t—anything less makes us accomplices. You have shown us the way and for that I am deeply grateful.

Rabbi Amy Scheinerman
President, Baltimore Board of Rabbis