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RSSTHE ROT AT THE CORE OF THE SYSTEM: gafni, kolko, lanner and more.
May 19
domestic violence, local stories/community, people No Comments
To blame the Renewal Movement for Mordechai Gafni’s criminal sexual behavior (I don’t see the word criminal used here, although that’s what it is–he broke civil as well as religious laws) is patently ridiculous. These issues have been around since I was a tyke. Girls were molested and spirited away while their teachers were allowed to continue. A few years ago, one guy, Brandstatter, was kicked out of Torah Vodaas and sent to my cousin’s kehilla. I called my cousin and reamed him out and basically got the same drill…he had charata, he did teshuva, etc. etc. etc. A few weeks later I got a phone call that I was correct in telling my cousin that his congregation should not be the garbage can for Rav Pam. The question is, where is Brandstatter now?
This guy Kolko that UJO exposed and that they wrote about in New York Magazine has been a known predator for 30 years. All my buddies in the Agudah knew about him, and kids who lived near Mir and Torah Temimah knew to stay away from him.
The problem is that the victims have been thoroughly and completely intimidated by their predators. Look, I know for a fact that mobi himself could have been a victim of a man who was such a predator in our neighborhood. The kids loved him, and he was friendly with kids and parents. Yet he was able to single out the most vulnerable boy in the area and had his fun–while the kid was traumatized beyond belief.
When the shit hit the fan, the man disappeared to South America. His family fell apart, and everyone was devastated, and it still is there, somewhere in the background when we think about how kids relate to mentors, teachers, charismatic leaders, etc.
I have been writing about domestic violence and sexual misbehavior in the Jewish community on the net for a very long time. When I first started to do this, my life, mobi’s life, all my children’s lives were threatened. The threats were made publicly, by an Orthodox Jew, a female. She was tracked down by our local police, and AOL TOSed her. She then stalked me around the net and succeeded in gaining access to a Second Generation (Children of Holocaust Survivors) network of which I was a member. After calling me a Hitler, I was ejected from that list because I protested her presence in the group.
Forty-nine years ago, when I reported child abuse and wife battering to my teachers, I was ignored and put into a sort of “cherem.� When I went up against the rabbinate in 1969 and 70 in order to get my get from a closeted gay who liked to smack me around, I had to fight tooth and nail to be heard. I wasn’t dealing with low lifes. Among the rabbis I was dragged to see was the venerable Mosiach himself, Menachem Schneerson, who was my ex-’s supposed leader, Rav Hutner his supposed Rosh Yeshiva, Reb Yoeli, my cousin the Satmar, the Sqvaerer Rebbe in Sqvaretown (which my father helped build), Rabbi Aaron Krieger, the get rabbi in Crown Heights, the Novominsker, whose wife at the time was my former Beis Yakov teacher and a counselor with Jewish Family Services in Boro Park (you don’t want to know the kinds of cases she was pursuing, but incest was on the list).
Not one of them took me seriously.
The only person who took me seriously was Reb Moishe Feinstein, Zichrono LeVaracha, who sent me to NY State Court to get my divorce (after I yelled at him and threw a hissy fit par excellence when he told me I should stay with the batterer for the sake of the child. I went right through the roof of his apartment, while the rebitzen cried into her apron. It could have been a scene straight from Fiddler on the Roof.)
In the end, in the original divorce decree, signed by Irving Saypol, (the same judge who sent Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to the chair) he was ordered to give me a get or go to jail He went to jail, and the decree was overturned for church/state reasons. My dad shelled out almost half a mil for my freedom. In the meantime, Reb Moishe and Shelly Silver came up with the Silver Get Law. It works.
But here’s the punch line–the Agudah has not yet stopped preaching against this law, claiming they need a needle not a sledge hammer to deal with these issues. They are right, they don’t need a sledge hammer. They need a nuclear bomb. but they aren’t interested. I called them on it and asked them since when they could supersede a psak from Reb Moishe. That doesn’t stop them from continuing to bust that law.
It took me years to convince certain people in the Agudah start writing against the practice of corporal punishment in yeshivas. And the fact that the Jewish Press, where Naomi Mauer works, is protecting Kolko, is way beyond belief. They were leaders against the abuse of women, but I guess boys don’t count! (One “leader� now in his 80s said to me, “You know how it is. There are no women in their lives. They get married and they straighten out.� That’s when I first understood the meaning of the word “Bent.�) Now another octogenarian rabbi turned around and said no laws had been broken cause there was no penetration. What the hell was that all about?
Out of all the crap that came out of their mouths, I will never forget Reb Hutner…These men need the money to get married again. find yourself a rich husband. And his daughter was my teacher at Esther Schoenfeld. Sheesh.
The punch line on all of this is the following: One major, major Chassidic rabbi I am related to knew my ex had been caught in bed with another guy at the yeshiva they both attended. It turns out that lots of people knew he was gay. No one told me. And though they knew it, and they knew I needed to get out of the marriage (I lied and said I committed adultery), not one of them came forward to make it possible for me to get a mekach taut, an annulment, instead of a get.
The rot in the system when it comes to the treatment of women in all the denominations is systemic. There are individuals and leaders in each movement who understand that women, children and other victims need to be heard. But the systems in every denomination is geared to keeping victims in their place while granting authority to the power system. The power system sucks. I have been howling for changes for more than 30 years.
My only hope is that in the last ten years, since this shit hit the internet, that changes have been forthcoming. I know that is so, but slow in ultra-O circles, but as I have said many times before:
When you sweep shit under the rug, the rot and the mildew will fester forever and stink up the whole house. When you pull the rug up, and the sun hits the crap, it can be cleaned up.
Shoving things under the rug is the first thing power structures do. The classic case is Baruch Lanner. As a long-time Bergen County resident who lived in Teaneck and our lawn boy was Yona Hiller, we know it took 30 years to bring that son of a bitch to justice.
But the people who brought the charges were, at first, vilified, ignored and forced to apologize.
So, it seems, it’s business as usual.
