Way Too Much Fear

For the past several years, I’ve watched the websites and the blogs when it comes to sexual molestation within the Jewish community.
I’ve noticed and learned so much.
There are so many who wish to offer counsel from their “expert” perches inside the organizational cage of societal structure.
We don’t hear enough, however from the real experts in the field of sexual abuse…the victims, the survivors.
We don’t hear enough, because so many are so afraid to be stigmatized. So many are so afraid of the results of their courage.
And this is a huge, huge mistake.
Sexual molestation, abuse whatever we call it is like the smoke from a fire. Even though the flames are long ago doused, the stench of the smoke still lingers on in the place of the fire. That’s what abuse does. It haunts its victims. It is there when they make their decisions about friendships, about jobs, about education, about child rearing, about religion.
And there are so many here in the Baltimore Jewish community who have been victimized by this. Some have memories that are decades old, yet like ice figures they are often frozen in place from seeking help or exposing their perpetrators.
We cannot pretend that this toxic problem doesn’t exist among us. We must do what we can to help welcome those victims who quietly suffer to come out of their places of hiding and seek to begin living full lives.
Please don’t make them feel awkward. Give them a place of welcome.
And if they aren’t too enthusiastic about their faith right now, that’s okay. Welcome them anyway. Bring people around through kindness and friendship and trust. Victims and survivors so need to be able to trust again.