I love how Jesse Katz focuses on how the case became a "Jewish American Rorschach test, its interpretation shaped by ideology, by identity, by religious and partisan agendas."
I could never become upset about the case. The rabbi felt verbally assaulted and he lashed out.
I’ve covered the case but never taken a side.
Now I understand what happened and why.
"Seidler-Feller attacked [right-wing Israeli activist Rachel] Neuwirth, clawing, hitting, and kicking her until students pulled him away."
"Seidler-Feller dug his nails into Neuwirth’s hand, leaving a pair of small red scratches. He drove a shoe into her calf, raising a purple welt. He wrenched her upper arm — the pattern of bruises would match his grip — then pushed Neuwirth so forcefully that she almost tumbled down the terrace stairs leading to Dickson Plaza. Several young Hillel associates put Seidler-Feller in a bear hug, but he broke free and his face flushed and contorted, tried to go after her again."
"Witnesses described him as an overbearing figure on campus, petulant, confrontational, jealous of his turf."
In addition to an abject apology written for him by Neuwirth, Chaim ended up paying her $200,000 to make the case go away.
"Stop showing up on my campus!" Rabbi Chaim yelled at several Stand With Us (pro-Israel group) when he saw them at an Israel-Palestine forum.
Chaim showed up uninvited to a Beverly Hills fundraiser for Stand With Us and heckled the speaker (Ben Shapiro), sparking a shoving match.
"When he fails to receive the proper deference, he can also bristle. In these moments he has been described as pushy, even boorish, his vaunted dialogues reduced to harangues. A few months after he was thrown out of the Stand With Us meeting, Seidler-Feller disrupted another forum…"
Chaim used to be married to the niece of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. It was over by 1975, when Chaim moved to Westwood. The two kids from it are not acknowledged in Chaim’s Hillel biography. They don’t carry his last name.
After his assult of Neuwirth, Seidler-Feller did not try to contact Neuwirth.
UCLA students Debra Greene and David Lazar began work on a story for UCLA’s Jewish magazine Ha’Am about Chaim’s UCLA legacy. When he found out about their investigation, the rabbi became furious. He branded their work as "evil." He got the story killed.
