So I don’t mean to sound like such a broken record at times.
But the fact of the matter is many of us are stressing ourselves out silly to get ready for Passover. We’re getting that last Cheerio out from underneath the sofa cushion. We’re scraping off the gunk that once was either chocolate or gravy from underneath the vegetable drawer in the refrigerator.
So I have a friend, whose name isn’t going to be used in this space right now.
He was molested as a young adult while a student at Ner Israel.
The pain, the anger, the angst have, like chometz, been part of his life for many years.
He goes to therapy, and that helps.
He seeks rabbinic help, and sometimes that works.
No matter how he tries to “clean” his soul of the chometz this man has stained his life with, it’s way too difficult to get clean.
Clean would feel so incredibly good.
Rabbi Moshe Eisemann lives on the campus of Ner Israel Rabbinical College. And my friend isn’t the only person who has suffered from his touch.
The Ner Israel community is cleaning and cleaning and cleaning some more in preparation for Passover.
No matter how much they clean, while Mr. Eisemann is still living on campus, they still are a campus with chometz.
That’s right, pure and simple chometz.
Why?
If the people in charge really wanted to make this right. If they really wanted to rid themselves of the chometz of molestation, they could.
They choose not to.
Would you choose to keep a piece of bread in plain sight of your seder table on Passover? Would you walk through the house the night before Passover, after having cleaned so thoroughly, doing your final search for chometz and walk by a piece of challah roll sitting on the floor?
No, of course you wouldn’t.
Ner Israel does.
You can clean all day, all night.
But in the eyes of HaShem, you’ll never be pure.
Not until the awful sins of this man are finally recognized and both he and Ner Israel seek redemption.
Here’s the final irony to all of this. Rabbi Eisemann has written a Haggadah, published by ArtScroll called “Lighting Up the Night.”
The very man who has caused the chometz of molestation has the gall to talk to us about our freedom and redemption. Shame on ArtScroll, the purveyor of so many Godly volumes, to put its stamp on the publication of a molester, who has lived out the very anti-thesis of the Passover message, freedom from slavery. My friend’s Egypt or mitzraim is the molestation suffered at the hands of Eisemann.
He has enslaved my friend and others by his actions. When my friend reads the Haggadah and gets to the four sons, he often feels like a fifth son, the son that isn’t allowed to belong at the table. When he reads the plagues, missing are the plagues of molestation, and the worse plague of silence and cover up.
Rabbi Eisemann could do the right thing, the Jewish thing, and publicly apologize. You know what? Maybe then, he’d free himself from his own personal chometz. But there’s nothing like the chometz of arrogance to keep one in the “holy” game.
Happy Passover “Rabbi” Eisemann.
You’ve still got some cleaning to do.
For ArtScroll? How can we read this Hagaddah from the very man whose actions enslaved the lives of others.
How can we?

That haggadah, along with all the other Eisemann works belong in genizah.  Eisemann recently put out a commentary on Pirkei Avos, the Ethics of our Fathers.  Talk about hypocrisy! His Vaad Nidchei Yisroel sent out copies to many households, including mine. I promptly deposited it on the local shaimos truck.