FEATURED JOBS
Rabbi Doctor Benzion Twerski stepped down from a New York task force that would investigate molestation within the Jewish community, according to the New York JewishWeek.
“For several days, I was approached by individuals, some stating that they would cross the street if they were to meet me while walking with their children,” wrote Rabbi Twerski. “Others told me that they would not accept my child into their class if assigned. They used euphemisms that I refuse to repeat. Family members were likewise confronted by all sorts of comments and phone calls. My married children had been told to fear ever getting shidduchim for their children. Basically, I was left to choose between abandoning my family for this mission, or to take the painful step that I did.”
They got to him.
One of the bright lights in Orthodox America has been quieted. It was if a fragile candle flame wasn’t just blown out, but it was doused with a filled bucket of water.
Here we are in the month of Elul leading into the holiest of days, and yet these people, these “leaders” have once again forgotten that they are not the ultimate judge. That one day they will have to account for their actions.
Rabbi Twerski, I am honored to be in your company. Here are just a few reasons why.
• A frum woman publicly accosted me at 7-Mile Market, questioning in a loud, intrusive voice why an area rabbi would want to have any association with me or with the Jewish Times.
• An Agudath Israel spokesman sent me emails attacking me and accusing me of writing stories on molestation because in his words I was trying to win the “Gary Rosenblatt Prize.”
• A man who I had learned with for many years, spoke to me in an inappropriate, hurtful way. He told me that I owed an explanation to him and others for writing the name of Rabbi Ephraim Shapiro, a deceased man who allegedly molested hundreds of times. I wrote him a letter of total respect thanking him for our learning, but putting an end to it. I haven’t heard a word from him since.
• Rabbi Heinemann wrote a letter that was posted on his building’s bulletin board, questioning the word “Jewish” in the name of this publication. He then urged his congregants not to allow our publication into their homes. He did this without the courage of a phone call or a meeting.
• I was told by a young rabbi in our community that based on how the older rabbis were behaving, I was doing more harm than good. He further said that many of the rabbis who signed the so-called April 11, 2007 letter from the Vaad addressing molestation, were now sorry they had signed the letter. The signatures were seen I was told as a validation of the Jewish Times’ stories.
• We used to have a mincha minyan here at the Jewish Times, but one of its participants, again a person with the title “rabbi” emailed folks and asked them not to support the minyan. Can you imagine, he would keep a person from saying Kaddish with a minyan?.
• The number of emails and anonymous blog responses urging my early death, the necessity of me to leave town, that my family should be cursed, that I should burn in hell.
• Even worse, the people who used to speak to me, who now don’t. I can’t even get them to say Good Shabbos. They say Good Shabbos to the floor or to the wall, but not to me. You know what it’s like to have people look not at you, but through you?
These are all people who wear black hats and sheitels and pray and keep kosher and call themselves observant.
Meanwhile, as Rabbi Twerski has found, there are no shortage of men and women who are finally feeling it important to tell their stories of survival. They are as close as I can define as being alive, but dead.
Rabbi Twerski, please don’t give in and please don’t give up.
This is about our relationship with HaShem, not the controlling forces of a group of frightened men who are covering their tracks and co-opting observant Judaism to do so. These posers know something.
They know that we know.
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