This article by Rachel Aviv makes Jews look bad. It embodies many of the themes of anti-Semites such as perversion, dishonesty and corruption.
Here’s the opening sentence: “Sam Kellner’s reputation in the Hasidic community of Borough Park, Brooklyn, began to suffer in 2008, when his teen-age son told him that he had been molested by a man who had prayed at their synagogue.”
His reputation suffered because he wanted the molester to be prosecuted by secular courts. He wasn’t willing to accept a pay-off to keep quiet.
Growing up a Seventh-Day Adventist, I didn’t hear about people getting bought off by bribes but Jews are more pragmatic. They’re more willing to talk about the natural passions for things such as sex, money and power. They’re more willing to do what it takes to make problems go away.
“In a community where non-procreative sex is considered shameful, molestation tends to be regarded in roughly the same light as having an affair.”
Bingo!
“When children complain about being molested, the council almost never notifies the police. Instead, it devises its own punishments for offenders: sometimes they are compelled to apologize, pay restitution, or move to Israel.”
Bingo!
“According to some interpretations of Talmudic law, a Jew who informs on another Jew has committed a capital crime.”
Bingo!
“Hasidim, whose movement emerged in the eighteenth century as a mystical, populist alternative to traditional Judaism, are defined in part by their concern for self-preservation.”
A cohesive group, all things being equal, is going to do better in the struggle for scarce resources than a less cohesive group. When Hasidim set their minds on something in a democracy, they tend to get it because they vote as a block along pragmatic lines.
“Although the Satmar community distrusts secular government, it participates fully in the democratic process. Hasidim typically vote as a bloc, delivering tens of thousands of votes to the politicians their leaders endorse. In exchange for the community’s loyalty, politicians have given Brooklyn’s Hasidim wide latitude to police themselves. They have their own emergency medical corps, a security patrol, and a rabbinic court system, which often handles criminal allegations.”
Another difference in this story from the life I knew growing up is that the warring parties never resort to physical violence.
“A few weeks later, Aron was invited to the home of Berel Ashkenazi, the spiritual adviser of his former yeshiva, who was a colleague of Baruch Lebovits’s son. It was a Friday afternoon, a few hours before businesses closed for Shabbat. Ashkenazi served Aron food, made polite conversation, and then, Aron said, offered him between five and ten thousand dollars to drop out of the case.”
Bingo!
Although Aron disliked Ashkenazi, he was tempted by the offer. He told Kellner that he needed the money. “Don’t be crazy!” Kellner shouted. “I could get you two hundred thousand dollars!” Kellner, who barely had enough money to support his family, told me that he was willing to say anything to keep the case intact.
This corresponds to the intense Jewish life I have known.
“Unless you really understand how this community works—what tactics are used to intimidate these victims, to prevent them from coming forward, to manipulate them into feeding the authorities wrong information—you will never deliver.”
Real life is lived within the Jewish community. Dr Joseph Dulbeeg, a Manchester Jew, wrote: “Judaism is not a religion merely, like Catholicism or Protestantism; it is a brotherhood, a race if you like; and that it will remain as long as there are two Jews left in the world. Say what you will, no matter how an English Jew or a German Jew may love and feel for his English or German neighbours, he will have a greater love, a greater sympathy for another Jew, even if that Jew may come from the other end of the world.”
I have some grudging respect for the New York Hasidim who had the last District Attorney, Charles Hynes, wrapped around their finger.
