The Hero System of UC Berkeley School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky

Posted on June 17, 2026 by Luke Ford

Ernest Becker (1924-1974) held that every culture answers one question. What makes a life count once a man knows he will die? The answer arrives as a hero system, a scheme of significance that promises a place outlasting the body. The scheme runs on sacred values. A man earns his standing by serving them and forfeits himself by betraying them. From inside the system the values feel absolute, woven into the structure of the world. They are coordinates inside one scheme. The proof sits in the scheme next door, where the same word carries different cargo.

Erwin Chemerinsky lives inside his sacred values with a consistency few men reach. He defends the speech he hates. He keeps his friendships with the men he fights, John Eastman and Eugene Volokh and Nadine Strossen and Doug Laycock, across lines that broke most academic friendships of his generation. He takes the heat and stays at the work. Whatever the deflationary readings find under the performance, the man has held faith with the things he calls sacred, and faith at that scale is honorable. This essay does not contest his values. It asks what they mean, and finds that the meaning lives only inside the hero system that holds them.

Start with his central word.

The rule of law. For Chemerinsky the phrase names a wall. He grew up on the South Side of Chicago in a working-class Jewish home, and he took from that childhood the lesson his cohort took: a society keeps Jews safe when it keeps everyone safe, when it has an independent judiciary, civil liberties with teeth, equal protection a court will enforce against a legislature. Behind the lesson stands the camp and the pogrom, the thing the wall holds back. So when he says the rule of law, he means predictable rules applied without favor, courts that bind the strongman, a document that outranks the man who holds office this year. He made it a deanship priority. He posts videos titled “It’s the Law.” When he warns that the rule of law stands under threat, he sees power escaping the courts, and the camp behind the gap.

Set him beside a Qing district magistrate in his yamen. For the magistrate order rises from li, from ritual propriety and the cultivated virtue of the ruler, and law, fa, is the sovereign’s instrument for managing the unruly. The good official rectifies names and restores harmony among unequal stations. A rule that binds the ruler reads to him as the tail commanding the dog, a sign that virtue at the top has failed. The same three words name his nightmare, not his wall.

Set him beside a Reformed elder who holds that the moral law is God’s decree, written into creation before any parliament sat. Human statute is a dim copy of a binding order that does not pass through committee. The rule of law for the elder runs straight up to Him, and a procedure that produces an unjust statute has produced no law at all, only the look of one.

Set him beside an old man in Naples raised under omertà. The state’s law is the law of the people who came to take, and a man who runs to the magistrate to settle a wrong has shamed his house. Real accounts settle in silence, inside the family, outside the courthouse Chemerinsky built his life to keep open. Same words. A different god in each mouth.

Take a second word, one Chemerinsky owns more than any man alive. Standing. His treatise Federal Jurisdiction lays out the doctrine of who may sue, whose injury a federal court will see. He argued against TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez because the Court narrowed who counts as injured, and the narrowing closed a door. For him standing is the threshold of being seen by the law, and his hero system widens that threshold. The Guantanamo detainee, the child in the underfunded school, the consumer carrying a false terrorism flag in a credit file he never read. The hero argues their standing into existence and makes the law reckon with them.

A Maori elder hears the word and thinks whakapapa. His standing is descent. He rises to speak on the marae because of the line of ancestors behind him, and no court grants it and no injury confers it. The line is the title.

A trader on a derivatives desk hears the word and thinks of his book. His standing is the number from last year, the profit and loss that decides whether the room turns when he speaks. The desk reckons with the man who made money and forgets the man who lost it.

A field physicist hears the word and thinks of priority. His standing is the citation, the effect that carries his name down the decades after the body quits. Each man uses the one syllable to answer the death-question. How do I count. Who must reckon with me. What of me survives. The answers do not translate.

Take a third word, the one that cost him most. Free speech. His honor move is to protect the voice he loathes, because he holds that open contest sorts truth from error and that a trained mind can weigh a vile claim and set it down. He hosted graduating students at his home, a protester reached for the microphone, his wife took it back, and he still defended the right to protest in the proper venue. He paid in standing with part of his own coalition and kept the principle. The cost is the measure of the value. A value with no cost buys a man nothing.

A guardian of the tongue from the traditional Jewish world hears free speech and recoils. In that world speech is danger and lashon hara, the evil tongue, is a grave sin, and the sacred discipline guards the mouth rather than freeing it. Free speech raised as a banner reads as a license for slander, a permission to do the harm the law of the tongue exists to prevent. The tradition that produced the dean also produced a value that runs against his.

A Carthusian in his cell hears free speech and hears noise. Silence is his discipline. The hours at the Grande Chartreuse pass mostly without words, and the renunciation of speech is his road to God, so the freedom to say anything looks like a freedom worth surrendering.

A signals officer hears free speech and thinks of the leak. Speech is classified, operational security is the sacred thing, and the man who talks is the traitor whose words get other men killed. To him Chemerinsky’s free contest of ideas is a breach waiting to happen.

Chemerinsky prizes neutrality. He built his casebook to sit on the shelf at Berkeley and at Notre Dame, to be adopted by the Federalist Society professor and the progressive one, and he calls the absence of his own voice from the doctrinal sections a kind of neutrality. The umpire holds the same value. He calls the pitch as he sees it and roots for no team, and his honor is that the crowd cannot read his loyalty off his arm. A war correspondent holds the word and bleeds on it, because at the massacre neutrality and witness pull against each other, and the reporter who stays neutral between the killer and the killed has chosen the killer. An arms broker holds the word too, and for him neutrality is the business model, the reason both sides buy from the same warehouse. The umpire’s virtue, the correspondent’s agony, the broker’s ledger, one word.

This reframes the fractures that have marked Chemerinsky’s late career. October 7 and its campus aftermath, the Trump administration’s war on the firms that crossed it, look from inside his system like assaults on his values or like his values failing him. Becker reads them another way. They are collisions between hero systems that happen to share a vocabulary. The student who took the microphone in his backyard and the dean who watched it leave his wife’s hand both said justice, both said speech, both said home, and the words did not carry the same freight across the few feet between them, because the schemes of significance behind the words were not the same scheme. The strongman in Washington and the dean in Berkeley both say the rule of law and point at opposite walls, one at the wall that binds the office, one at the wall that protects the man who holds it. Two sacred orders meet at a podium and each hears the other profaning a word.

The tragedy Becker names is the honest man who thinks he argues about a value the world shares while he defends a god the world does not. Chemerinsky took the local for the universal. He had to. A hero system trains a man to take its values for the structure of reality, because a value that announced itself as local could not anchor a life or hold back the camp. The training that made him faithful is the same training that hid the locality from him. He could not have served the wall so long while seeing it as one wall among many.

His honor is that he served his god well. His limit is the limit of every man who has loved a sacred thing. The casebook in the next student’s hands is his bid against the death that started the whole question, and it is a worthy bid, a durable one, the kind a scholar leaves behind. The words inside it will travel as far as his hero system travels and no farther. That holds for the magistrate and the elder and the man in Naples, for the Maori elder and the trader and the physicist, for the guardian of the tongue and the monk and the officer at his console. It held for the student at the microphone, who carried his own sacred words into a room that could not hear them as sacred. It holds for all of them, and it holds for him, and the holding might be the most human thing about any of them.

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The Hero System of WSJ Editor Emma Tucker

Posted on June 17, 2026 by Luke Ford

Stand in the Journal newsroom an hour before the page closes and watch the life cycle of a scoop. A reporter has something no one else has. An OpenAI deal, a hospital chain in the Justice Department’s sights, a number that moves a market. The desk lights up. Editors crowd a screen. For an hour the room holds one object at its center and the charge runs high. The story goes up. By breakfast every rival has matched it, the cable shows are chewing it, and the thing that owned the room last night is common property. By the next morning it is landfill. The reporter is already chasing the next one, because the only currency the room respects is the one that spoils fastest.

Emma Tucker runs this room, and she has given it a creed. News is what is new. She tells the staff the subscription run was not an accident, not luck, not the Journal’s turn. She says it twice, three ways, to land it. She built a method on a single sentence, and the sentence points forward, always forward, toward the story no one has yet.

Ernest Becker (1924-1974) wrote two books about why men build things like this. In The Denial of Death he argued that man is the animal who knows he will die, that the knowledge is unbearable, and that he spends his life refusing it. The refusal takes the shape of heroism. A man earns the feeling that he counts, that his days add to something, that he is an object of primary value in a universe that means something. He earns it by attaching himself to a hero system, a structure of value larger and longer-lived than his body, and by playing a part in it that wins him a name. The system promises what the body cannot deliver. It promises that some piece of him outlasts the worms. In Escape from Evil Becker took the argument one turn darker. The hero systems collide. My path to significance asks me to deny yours, and the denied become the scapegoats whose expulsion pays for my immortality.

Set Tucker inside this and the biography turns. She is not only an editor managing a transition in the press business. She is a mortal attaching her name to a body she hopes will outlast her, and the body she chose is 136 years old and might die on her watch. Advertising, which paid for papers across the twentieth century, collapsed into Google and Facebook. The Journal could have followed the titles that did not adapt. Her terror is the editor’s version of the universal one. She might preside over a death and be remembered as the custodian who held the chair while the thing went dark. Against that she set a second fear, subtler and more personal, the fear of the steward who changes nothing and leaves no mark. She refused both. She set out to be the one who carried the paper across, and the carrying would be her monument.

Here the trouble starts, and it is the trouble worth dwelling on, because it sets her hero system apart from almost every other one men have built. The systems that promise permanence usually worship the old. They reach back. The eternal, the founding text, the precedent, the score, the tradition handed down without a break. Tucker’s guild worships the new. It stakes its whole claim to value on the perishable. She wants a monument and pays for it in the one coin that turns to dust by morning. The cathedral built of yesterday’s front pages.

Watch how the sacred words change meaning when you carry them across the border into other rooms.

Take independence, the word the guild says most and prizes highest. In Tucker’s house it means the news answers to no proprietor and no advertiser, that the firewall holds, that the editor is never cowed. The free press guards the public and bends to nothing. Carry the word to a litigator and it inverts. The trial lawyer’s honor is partisanship. He is bound to the client, sworn to him, and a lawyer who drifts toward some independent sense of the truth betrays the man who trusted him. His virtue is the loyalty Tucker’s virtue forbids. Carry it to the conductor on the podium and it inverts again. The conductor who asserts himself against the score is a vandal. His glory lies in submission, fidelity to a dead composer’s marks, the effacement of his own will before a text he did not write. The same word that crowns Tucker’s freedom condemns his. Carry it to the man bent over a page of Talmud and it splits in half. He prizes the lone reading, the chiddush, the insight no one reached before him, and yet he may have it only inside the chain. He is not free of the masorah, the transmission. To stand outside it is not independence but exile. Four honorable men, four meanings, one word, and each meaning makes sense only inside the system that holds it.

Take the new, the thing that organizes her whole order. For Tucker the new is the holy. The scoop sits at the top of the value stack, above the Pulitzer and the Polk: the new thing, reported first, that changes what a reader does next. To be beaten to a story is the small daily death. Carry that to the man learning Talmud and the new turns suspect. There is nothing new under the sun. His novelty earns a place only as a fresh reading of an eternal text, never as a break from it, and a teaching with no root in what came before is not insight but error. Carry it to a surgeon and first loses its glamour. First means the first cut, the irreversible one, the thing you do not get to do again and cannot scoop. Carry it to a central banker and first becomes a vice. His virtue is to move last, slow, only when sure, to be the deliberate body that the fast world checks itself against. Now carry it to the founder in the room down the road from Tucker’s old beat, and the word snaps back into her register. First to market. First mover. He too runs toward the new and counts the same way she counts, in cohorts and churn and the number that tells him whether the thing is alive. He too treats growth as proof of life. The difference hides in what the growth serves. The founder grows to sell. His immortality is the exit, the cash-out, the next company. The institution is a vehicle he abandons at the off-ramp. Tucker grows to keep. She wants the body she feeds to stand long after she is gone, with her name in the record of the people who kept it standing. Same dashboard, opposite faith.

Take courage, which the guild dresses in a single line. Tucker says her team ran toward the fire on the Epstein story, the one that drew a ten-billion-dollar suit from Donald Trump (b. 1946) and survived a federal judge’s dismissal in April 2026. She means a fire of lawyers and reputational heat and pre-publication threat, real costs, paid in money and nerves. Carry the phrase to a battlefield medic and the fire is fire. Running toward it is how the body ends. The figure of speech she reaches for is, for him, a description. Between the rhetorical fire and the real one stands the man the whole set venerates, Evan Gershkovich (b. 1991), the reporter Russia jailed in 2023 and held sixteen months until the prisoner swap brought him home on August 1, 2024. He is sacred to the guild because in him the figure came true. The fire stopped meaning a hard week and became a cell. The campaign for his release ran hot for over a year and bound the newsroom tighter than any product launch could, and when he walked off the plane the room had its martyr and its proof that the words about courage were not only words. Tucker spoke of him with care, weighing the duty to cover the news against the safety of the people she sends toward the actual fire. The veneration is honest. It also does quiet work for the rhetorical kind of courage, lending the cell’s seriousness to the lawsuit’s.

So far the frame stays warm, and it should, because Tucker is an honorable steward of an honorable thing. The paper she runs broke real stories, faced down a president, and spent a year and a fortune to bring a colleague home from a penal colony. None of that is theater. Becker does not ask us to sneer at the hero. He asks us to see the creature under the heroics and to grant that the creature’s fear is our own. Strip the mission language from Tucker, the talk of independent journalism and of telling readers what they need to know about the world, and you do not find a fraud. You find a mortal manager who chose a worthy body to attach her name to and races the clock to keep it alive. The race is the most human thing about her.

But Becker wrote a second book, and the second book is where the warmth has to make room for the cost. Escape from Evil says a hero system flourishes by expelling those who no longer fit the new shape of it, and that the expelled pay the bill for everyone else’s significance. The Journal newsroom shows the ledger. Tucker brought her own lieutenants across the Atlantic and moved old hands out to seat them. Karen Pensiero, thirty-seven years in the building, a defender of the women on the staff, went out to make room. A deputy known for cutting earned the nickname the angel of death. Staff learned to ask who gets Tucked next. The layoffs came dressed in the soft words the growth language keeps on hand, reconfiguring, restructuring, the price of great work. Read through Becker, the soft words are not deception so much as the rite every hero system performs over the people it sheds. The charge that makes the front page hum, the energy the young digital hires carry into the morning meeting, is bought in part with the expulsion of the people whose habits were tuned to the old signals. Their grievance is real. So is her need to clear the room to save the body. Both hold at once, and in Becker’s account they usually do. Evil here wears no villain’s face. It is the arithmetic of one immortality project running over another.

Which returns us to the perishable coin, and to where the thing might break. The conductor’s score will be played in a hundred years. The Talmudist’s text outlasted empires. The litigator’s precedent binds courts not yet convened. These men buy permanence with permanence. Tucker buys it with the new, and the new has a half-life measured in hours. Her monument is a daily that is wrong or stale by the following dawn, that must be rebuilt from nothing every twenty-four hours, that confers her immortality only so long as the next charged story lands on time. She built the most fragile of the great hero systems, the one that dies the moment it stops making the perishable thing. The reservoir of prestige from the homecoming and the won lawsuit drains. The question her tenure leaves open is whether a structure built on what spoils can ever hold the permanence she reaches for, or whether she pours herself, with real courage and real skill, into a vessel that by its nature cannot keep what she puts in it.

Three places to watch.

Watch the soft words around the next round of cuts, because there the cost of her immortality shows on other people’s faces, and there the gap between the martyr she venerates and the veterans she sheds opens widest.

Watch what the guild does the next time the fire is real and not rhetorical, the next jailed correspondent, because the campaign will tell you whether the courage in the creed bears weight or only decorates, and Gershkovich set the bar.

Watch the half-life. Watch whether the charged story keeps arriving, because the day it stops is the day the monument begins to fade, and an editor who built her name on the new has no older, slower thing to fall back on. She tied her permanence to the one currency that cannot sit still. That is the wager. It is honorable, and it is exposed, and the worms are patient.

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Report: Rabbi Eliyahu Haimof, Accused in Lawsuit of Sexually and Physically Abusing Child, Threatens ZA’AKAH with Lawsuit, Then with Din Torah

Posted on June 17, 2026 by Luke Ford

Zaakah posts March 10, 2026:

In January ZA’AKAH posted about a lawsuit against Beis Yaakov of 18th Avenue for failure to report abuse allegedly committed by Rabbi Eliyahu Haimof, rabbi of Kahal Lema’an Achai in Boro Park. The complaint alleged that Haimof (named in the suit as Aleksi Khaimov) fondled Plaintiff’s genitalia, digitally penetrating her at least twice. The complaint further alleged that Haimof repeatedly beat and threw objects at the alleged victim. Plaintiff alleged in the lawsuit that she appeared in school with visible bruises and twice disclosed to two principals that Haimof had beaten her, but neither of them ever reported it.
In response to ZA’AKAH’s posting the allegations against Haimof, he found a lawyer who specializes in debt collection to send ZA’AKAH not only a cease and desist, but a threat that if the post wasn’t taken down by the next day ZA’AKAH would be hit with a lawsuit. In its response to this threat, ZA’AKAH reminded this lawyer that not only was the coverage of the case covered by the Fair Reporting Privilege, but that New York has very strong Anti-SLAPP protections, and that the frivolous filing of such a lawsuit would result in steep monetary penalties against his client. No lawsuit was filed.
Instead, ZA’AKAH received a summons to Badatz Mishpitei Yisroel on behalf of the plaintiffs, Rabbi Eliyahu Haimof, and his shul, Khal Lemaan Achai, for defamation, lashon hara, and rechilus. The beis din that issued the summons proudly boasts that it was established by Yisroel Belsky. The same Yisroel Belsky who publicly advocated for Yiddy Kolko despite his notorious abuse of dozens if not hundreds of boys in Camp Agudah and Yeshiva Torah Temima. The same Yisroel Belsky who very publicly destroyed the lives of Yosef Kolko’s victim and his family.
This same beis din also summoned the victim of Nechemya Weberman and her husband to a din torah in 2022 so Nechemya Weberman could sue them for compensation and damages. Notably, not too long after that, UTA paid a very large amount of money to the victim to settle the civil lawsuit against itself, Bais Rochel, and Weberman.
In the beis din’s latest summons they issue an ikul against ZA’AKAH not to continue being motzie shem ra on Eliyahu Haimof. This is a fundamentally incompatible order with allegations of Lashon Hara which is a statement that is true but nonetheless considered harmful to its subject. If ZA’AKAH doesn’t remove its posts about Haimof, the beis din threatens to issue an ex parte Heter Arkaos to Haimof and Lemaan Achai allowing them to pursue action in civil court. Haimof must not have informed them about his initial threats of civil litigation against ZA’AKAH before seeking such a Heter Arkaos.
Finally the beis din summons ends with a threat of seruv against ZA’AKAH. The text reads: If you continue ignoring the beis din, left with no choice it will issue a seruv against you to inform the public of your brazenness toward the beis din.
The chutzpah is all theirs.
The work continues.

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Report: Oberlin Chabad Rabbi, Shlomo Elkan, Removed Banned from Campus for Allegedly Engaging in Online Conversation Describing the Sexual Abuse of Children

Posted on June 17, 2026 by Luke Ford

Zaakah posts March 18, 2026: In a letter sent to students last week by Oberlin president Ambar, students were informed that Rabbi Scott Shlomo Elkan, co-director of Oberlin’s Chabad, had been banned from campus. Her letter stated that according to a police report Elkan admitted to egregious actions in his personal life, including engaging in online sexual conversations concerning children, and objectionable behavior.
The Forward reported today, based on a copy of the police report that it obtained, that Elkan had allegedly received sexually explicit texts, photos, and videos through Kik concerning three young people, ages 7, 12, and 13. In December, the Forward reported, Elkan allegedly been talking to someone who sent Elkan photos of himself giving a child a bath, alluded to himself touching the child’s genitals, and said he had been aroused when the child was sitting on his lap. The forward further reported that according to the report Elkan had shared photos of girls as part of that conversation.
Elkan, for his part, claimed to the Forward that his messages were not based on real events, but were between him and an adult and based on fantasy. He did not, according to the forward, address the photos.
According to the Forward Elkan resigned from his position with Chabad last Friday, per a Chabad spokesperson.
In her letter, Ambar acknowledged that no charges had been filed against Elkan, but nonetheless acknowledged the violation of basic morality and civil norms that were incompatible with Oberlin’s values. The letter stated that Oberlin had become aware of the matter after Oberlin police had reached out to the college as part of its ongoing investigation, and after filing a public records request with the police department, the college became aware of the precise nature of the allegations.
The letter announced an investigation into Elkan’s behavior and a campus climate assessment to determine the impact, and provided contact information for the investigators.
Below is the full text of the letter:
This is a very difficult message to deliver. I write to you in this moment not only as the President, but also as a member of our community and as an Obie parent. I hold close my commitment to the safety and welfare of our students, faculty, and staff, and the values that make Oberlin the precious place that we love. It is this commitment to the welfare of our community and our shared values that requires this message.
Today, Oberlin College severed its relationship with Rabbi Scott (Shlomo) Elkan, based on information in an Oberlin Police Department report. As many of you are aware, Elkan was a longtime volunteer at our college, certifying our kosher kitchen and sometimes leading Passover services and other religious celebrations. However, in the police report, Elkan admits to egregious actions in his personal life—including engaging in online sexual conversations concerning children and objectionable behavior. This behavior violates Oberlin’s values, shocks the conscience, and makes it clear that we cannot allow him continued access to our campus and community. Consequently, we have banned him from campus, from attending college events, and from representing himself as connected to Oberlin College in any way.
As abrupt and difficult as these measures will be—especially for those who sought spiritual leadership and guidance from Elkan—the seriousness of this matter requires clear and swift action. While no criminal charges have been filed against Elkan, his behavior and the language he acknowledged using violate basic morality and civil norms and are incompatible with the values of our institution.
We became aware of a matter involving Elkan when the Oberlin Police Department reached out to the college as part of an ongoing investigation. Based on this outreach, we filed a public-records request with the Oberlin Police Department to learn the substance of the matter. On March 5, we received the police report revealing that Elkan had engaged in online sexual conversations and behavior concerning children.
While the college has not previously received reports of this nature regarding Elkan’s behavior, we have asked a third party to conduct an inquiry and a campus climate assessment to determine if there are members of our campus who have been impacted. To begin this process, we are asking anyone in the Oberlin community who has concerns or information about Elkan that they wish to disclose to reach out to INCompliance at [email protected] or 216-523-5472.
During this challenging moment, we also want to ensure that our community has the guidance of counseling services and the Multifaith Chaplaincy staff. It is understandable that this news may be upsetting, and I encourage you to seek the support you need.
If it would be helpful to talk, process, or simply be in a supportive space, please stop by to see our campus counselors. Counseling and Psychological Services will offer drop-in sessions in Dascomb from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturday and Sunday, March 14 and 15, and again on March 21 and 22. Drop-in hours will also continue from 9 to 11 a.m. and 1 to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday. The Multifaith Chaplaincy staff also invites those seeking connection and support to join them at Lewis House until 5 p.m. today (Friday) and between 10 a.m. and noon on Saturday and Sunday. Other campus resources include the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life and Student Support and Outreach.
We have worked hard to build a rich and robust Jewish life at Oberlin, as evidenced by our strong Jewish Studies program, our religious and spiritual student life support, our vibrant and growing engagement with Jewish-centered organizations, the numerous Jewish student groups on campus, and our kosher kitchen. I am committed to maintaining the various programs that our students, faculty, and staff enjoy. To help our students through this time and provide spiritual guidance, we have asked Rabbi Allison B. Vann to work with our community through the remainder of the semester. Rabbi Vann was last on campus to lead High Holy Day services in 2025.
I can appreciate that receiving this message will engender a range of emotions: disbelief, sadness, concern, frustration, and many sentiments in between. I am experiencing this range of emotions myself, but they are tempered because I have been a part of this community for many years, and I can speak directly to our resilience. Be assured that the strength of our community will endure, and I look forward to the day when our current emotions are replaced by trust, joy, reassurance, and peace.

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Substack Article: ‘Poking a Hornet’s Nest: Breaking the Silence on Akiva Roth, EBJC, Camp Ramah and Cover-Up Culture in Conservative Judaism’

Posted on June 17, 2026 by Luke Ford

Alex S. Kaufman writes March 11, 2026: Today is a big day—a day that I’ve anticipated for decades. Following the settlement of the lawsuit that I filed in October 2021 against Akiva Roth, the predator who abused me as a child, and against the East Brunswick Jewish Center (EBJC) and its former pulpit rabbi, Chaim Rogoff, who covered for him, I am revealing my identity and telling my story publicly for the first time.

My name is not John Doe. It is Alex Kaufman. And I am a survivor of child sex abuse and a cover-up that spans the Jewish experience.

My settlement represents a milestone in the world of child sex abuse cases because it includes concrete and meaningful restorative steps that EBJC—my childhood synagogue in East Brunswick, New Jersey—agreed to take to make that institution safer for children. Schools, camps and houses of worship can reduce the likelihood that a predator will target or thrive in their community by implementing simple, but often non-obvious, protective measures.

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Manny Waks Abuser Sentenced

Posted on June 17, 2026 by Luke Ford

The Canberra Times reports March 19, 2026: The battle is over for a prominent victim advocate after his abuser was sentenced for sexually exploiting him at a Jewish holy festival close to four decades ago.

Manny Waks was aged between 10 and 12 when Zev “Velvel” Serebryanski assaulted him at the Yeshiva Centre in Melbourne’s southeast sometime between 1986 and 1988.

Serebryanski, who was in his early 20s at the time, had developed a sexual interest in the then-child and cornered him upstairs one night during the religious Shavuot festival.

The man sat down on a bench next to the pre-teen and groped at his groin before pulling him into a bathroom and sexually assaulting him.

In sentencing the now-62-year-old to a suspended jail term, Victorian County Court Judge John Kelly described Serebryanski’s actions as transgressive and predatory.

“It is an attack on innocence, an attack on childhood,” he said on Friday.

“You said you were only following your victim’s lead … that is a transparently absurd proposition.”

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Report: Lakewood Resident, Shemuel Shalomchaim, Charged with Rape

Posted on June 17, 2026 by Luke Ford

Zaakah posts March 19, 2026: Shemuel Shalomchaim is a resident of Lakewood and owns a trucking company there. He surrendered to the NYPD on Tuesday to face charges of rape in the first degree, sexual abuse in the first degree, rape in the third degree, sexual misconduct, and sexual abuse in the third degree. According to the complaint, in 2022 Shalomchaim raped a woman while she was asleep. He is currently out on $10,000 bail.
Shalomchaim reportedly also learns in Rabbi Aron’s yeshiva, Yeshiva Nesiv Hatorah, in Tom’s River.

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Report: Saul Len Changes His Story Again, Claims He Unwittingly Uploaded All That CSAM to Google Drive, Claims to Start Organization to Help People with Porn Addictions

Posted on June 17, 2026 by Luke Ford

Zaakah posts April 12, 2026:

In an Instagram post last night, Saul Len has changed his story from claiming that he was innocent of everything he was charged with, to claiming that he did upload all that CSAM to Google Drive – but only by accident – from a porn-filled Telegram group he voluntarily joined. According to his new post he developed an interest in porn from a young age that got out of hand and became an addiction. As time went on, Len wrote, he joined large porn oriented chats on WhatsApp and Telegram where porn was being shared constantly.
According to the complaint filed at the start of his criminal case, there were 15 specific videos found on his Google Drive depicting the rape of children between the ages of 3 and 13. An additional 126 files of a criminal nature were found in his drive by law enforcement, according to the complaint. He was charged with 15 counts of felony possession of CSAM.
He was given a sweetheart plea deal for all that CSAM. He pleaded guilty to 15 felony counts related to CSAM as well as one misdemeanor for Unlawful Modification of a Computer. Adjudication was withheld on the 15 felonies, and he was only convicted of the misdemeanor, and sentenced to 6 months in jail and 10 years of supervised release.
Not satisfied enough with that slap on the wrist, he requested that the entire record of his plea hearing and conditions be sealed by the judge. The prosecutor didn’t object because prosecutors rarely object to such requests. He likely made this request for the express purpose of setting up the lie he immediately told to his community after his plea hearing concluded.
In a WhatsApp message sent widely to members of the community, Len claimed that the State had investigated the initial CSAM charges and had found that they were without basis. He claimed that he was taking a plea to a single misdemeanor that carried a 6 month jail sentence to be rid of the case.
While Len is now admitting that what he said in that message wasn’t true, he never had any intention of coming clean. This statement from Len comes on the heels of him losing a legal battle against ZA’AKAH over the unsealing of his plea transcript.
Immediately following Len’s initial WhatsApp statement, ZA’AKAH challenged the sealing of his plea hearing in court. Len fought hard against the unsealing request, repeatedly claiming throughout the 6 months of initial litigation that ZA’AKAH intended to misrepresent the details of his plea if the record would be unsealed. The judge, however, repeatedly noted that the only party who had ever mischaracterized the plea and expressed an interest in continuing to mischaracterize the plea was Len himself.
He lost, and the records were ordered unsealed in June of 2025. That wasn’t enough for him. He immediately filed an appeal to the unsealing decision which delayed their release for another 10 months until his appeal was finally denied. It was only after ZA’AKAH exposed the truth of his plea – that he had pleaded guilty to 15 CSAM related felonies and a misdemeanor but received a withheld adjudication on the felonies – that Len saw fit to release this statement.
Which brings us back to this new statement. Len claims that the CSAM only wound up on his Google Drive because he accidentally had automatic uploads for WhatsApp and Telegram chats enabled on his phone, but that he never really knew that CSAM was shared in the group, never saw it himself, and didn’t deliberately save it.
Aside from Len’s repeated lies and deliberate attempts to hide the truth of his plea, this new claim is implausible on its face. By his own admission he joined these chats voluntarily. As noted above, the files on his Google Drive included 15 videos of the rape of children as young as 3, and an additional 126 files of a criminal nature. Len is asking us to believe that all of these files went through a porn group that he, a porn addict, deliberately joined, presumably for the purpose of watching and enjoying the content being shared, and that he never noticed all of the videos showing children as young as 3 being raped.
Whether he deliberately uploaded them to his Google Drive or not – which itself is a dubious claim – it strains credulity to claim that he somehow never saw what was being shared in these groups he deliberately joined as a porn addict. As if legal porn is a scarce commodity on the internet and that he never had a real interest in this very specific series of groups he joined.
Saul Len repeatedly lied to hide his crimes, attempted to abuse the legal system to keep his community in the dark about the risk he poses, and now, only when exposed, is spinning another implausible story that admits the barest minimum he can no longer deny while attempting to minimize the severity of what he did.
That such an unrepentant liar wants to start an organization to address men’s mental health is alarming. This isn’t teshuva. It isn’t coming clean. It’s yet another attempt at manipulation by a liar and criminal who got caught lying.

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Report: North Miami Beach Resident, Yona (Shaya) Lunger, Arrested Twice, Charged with Multiple Sex Crimes Against Children

Posted on June 17, 2026 by Luke Ford

Zaakah posts April 21, 2026:

Yona Lunger is a resident of North Miami Beach. According to News reporting over the years, he is very involved in a number of community organizations, including one that he founded called Chessed of South Florida. He is also a chaplain, and has served on a number of city advisory boards.
According to a criminal complaint filed on March 25th, Lunger entered a teenage girl’s bedroom and closed the door. The complaint alleges that during the interaction he had with her he told the victim to “put away her sexy things” referring to her breasts, and then proceeded to hug and kiss the victim multiple times. He allegedly kissed her multiple times near the lips, asked her to kiss him, and then left the room. The complaint alleges that Lunger, on multiple occasions, expressed a desire for the victim to turn 18. He was arrested and charged with felony lewd and lascivious conduct with a child under 16.
While out on $7,500 bail for that alleged offense, Lunger was arrested again yesterday on new felony charges, lewd and lascivious molestation of a child under 16 and lewd and lascivious conduct with a child under 16. Bail was set at $5,000 each but he is currently incarcerated until his next hearing. The complaint is not yet available for the new charges but we will post an update when it becomes available.
According to Local News 10, after his first arrest another victim came forward and accused Lunger of putting his hands on her breasts for a minute when she was a minor. According to the report, Lunger had come to her family’s home and offered to restock grocery items for her family. He then allegedly took the girl to a supermarket where he held her hand. On the drive home, according to the report, Lunger made inappropriate comments toward her, eventually putting his hands on her breasts and trying to kiss her on the lips.

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Report: Lakewood Resident, Rabbi Yechiel Farkash, Facing Extradition to Israel for Alleged Sexual Abuse of Students at Bnei Brak Yeshiva Where He Taught, Denied Bond Ahead of Extradition Hearing

Posted on June 17, 2026 by Luke Ford

Zaakah posts April 23, 2026:

According to a complaint filed in New Jersey Federal Court, Rabbi Yechiel Farkash, 43, was working as a rebbi, menahel, and remedial teacher at Yeshiva Toras Hachayim in Bnei Brak between 2020 and 2023. During that time, the complaint alleges, he began giving Victim 1 extra attention relative to other students, summoning him to Farkash’s office often, buying him clothing, and giving him money for that purpose. According to the complaint Victim 1 was living at Keren Hayeled, a boarding house in Bnei Brak that caters to orphans, children with mental illness, and children who have experienced abuse or neglect.
On multiple occasions between June 2021 and October 2023, according to the complaint, Farkash called Victim 1, who was a teenager, to his office, where he would hug Victim 1 from the front or back, and occasionally press his erect genitalia against Victim 1’s body. In June of 2022, according to the complaint, Farkash and Victim 1 visited the Knesset in honor of Victim 1’s birthday. During the drive, the complaint alleges, Farkash touched Victim 1 near his lower abdomen and genitalia, and reminded Victim 1 of everything Farkash had bought him when Victim 1 resisted, which made Victim 1 stop resisting. The complaint alleges that while in a Knesset elevator Farkash hugged Victim 1 and pressed his genitalia into Victim 1’s body.
later that day, according to the complaint, when the two of them returned to Yeshiva, Farkash called Victim 1 to his office where he again hugged Victim 1, pressing his genitalia into Victim 1’s body, and then touched his own genitals, and then touched Victim 1’s genitals over his clothes. The following month, according to the complaint, Farkash took Victim 1 to a bed and breakfast in the Jerusalem area where he played porn on the television, seated Victim 1 on his lap, hugged and soaped Victim 1’s body, and touched Victim 1’s genitalia under his underwear. The complaint alleges that while this happened Victim 1 stated that he wanted a smartphone, and Farkash responded by telling Victim 1 that in that moment he could request anything.
Farkash and Victim 1 then allegedly went into the hot tub in their underwear, where Farkash allegedly placed Victim 1’s head of Farkash’s genitalia, then pressed his genitalia against Victim 1’s buttocks and between his legs, trying to experience sexual release. The complaint alleges that Farkash then kissed Victim 1 and touched his buttocks under his underwear. When Victim 1 resisted, the complaint alleges, Farkash told him that next time would be easier, then grabbed Victim 1’s head, kissed him on the mouth, and then followed Victim 1 into the shower and kissed him.
The complaint further alleges that the following month Farkash took Victim 1 and Victim 2 to a water part in Holon where he entered a hot tub with Victim 1 and touched his genitalia. The following month, according to the complaint, Farkash invited Victim 1 to sleep over in an apartment that Farkash rented near his home in Rechovot, and on at least four occasions touched Victim 1’s genitals over and under his clothes.
The following year, in 2023, according to the complaint, Farkash rented a room for himself and Victim 1 where he instructed Victim 1 to sit on his lap in the jacuzzi, telling Victim 1 not to be ungrateful. Later, the complaint alleges, when Farkash took the victim back to bed, Farkash inserted his penis through Victim 1’s boxers, rubbed it against Victim 1’s buttocks, and attempted to anally penetrate Victim 1. When Victim 1 resisted, according to the complaint, Farkash got angry, grabbing and shaking Victim 1, and repeatedly attempting anal penetration, changing positions periodically, while Victim 1 continued to resist.
At some point during the incident, according to the complaint, Farkash, while wearing boxers, pressed his penis against Victim 1’s mouth and subsequently placed Victim 1’s hand on Farkash’s penis, who then asked Victim 1 to remove his underwear so Farkash could see his genitals. On the drive back, the complaint alleges, Farkash repeatedly touched Victim 1, eventually stopping the car to reach his hand into Victim 1’s underwear, touch his buttocks, and kiss him.
The complaint alleges that in June of 2023, under the pretense of celebrating Victim 1’s birthday, Farkash rented a room in Bnei Brak where he brought Victim 1 and another minor. In the room, according to the complaint, Farkash and the other minor changed into bathing suits while Victim 1 undressed to his boxers. Farkash then allegedly played porn on the TV and later allegedly touched Victim 1’s body and genitals over his clothing.
The complaint alleges that Victim 1 told a staff member at the boarding house about what Farkash was doing.
The complaint further alleges that in December of 2022 Farkash overheard Victim 2, a teen a couple of years younger than Victim 1, discussing his sweater with other people, and decided to buy Victim 2 a new sweater. Victim 2 allegedly expressed reservations, but Farkash allegedly insisted. According to the complaint, Farkash then drove Victim 2 to a shopping center while another minor sat in the front passenger seat and Victim 2 sat in the rear. During the drive, according to the complaint, Farkash reached out and stroked Victim 2’s leg and moved up to Victim 2’s groin, repeatedly telling Victim 2 that Farkash loved him.
At the shopping center, according to the complaint, Farkash asked Victim 2 to pick a sweater, and when Victim 2 said he didn’t see one he liked, Farkash approached him, stroked his neck, told him he loved him, and insisted on finding a sweater Victim 2 would like. They then allegedly went shopping in other stores in the shopping center, where Farkash allegedly stroked Victim 2’s neck, and placed his hands on Victim 2’s
abdomen. Victim 2 allegedly removed Farkash’s hand and told him that he found the action unpleasant.
Afterwards, according to the complaint, Farkash took Victim 2 out to eat, and on the way back continued putting his hand on Victim 2’s body.
The complaint alleges that Farkash departed Israel in January of 2024, shortly after the investigation into these alleged crimes began.
At a bond hearing today in Federal Court, the US Attorney alleged that Farkash had been aware of the investigation and had fled Israel to avoid it. The purpose of the hearing was to determine of Farkash would be allowed to leave jail on bond and house arrest ahead of his extradition hearing. He was represented by a federal defender.
At the hearing a number of people appeared in his support. His wife was present, accompanied by Rabbi Yosef Irons, Rav of Beis Medrash 309 Central, which is very close to where Farkash lived in Lakewood after allegedly fleeing to the United States. Farkash’s attorney requested that Farkash be released on house arrest on a bond secured by Rabbi Irons’ house, and also said that Farkash would live in Rabbi Iron’s mother-in-law apartment for the duration of his proposed house arrest. Farkash’s lawyer also pointed to
In further support of Farkash’s release he argued that Farkash faces special circumstances that should allow him out on house arrest rather than pretrial detention. He raised the serious genetic health conditions faced by two of Farkash’s children who are undergoing treatment for those conditions, as well as Farkash’s wife’s pregnancy which, given her age and other factors, rendered her at high risk of miscarriage. Additionally he raised concerns over how much more difficult incarceration would be for Farkash, who was facing impeded access to tallis and tefillin, kosher food, and an absolute language barrier in the jail.
He cited Farkash’s close ties to the community, as evidenced by the presence of Irons’, Irons’ wife, and another community member who wasn’t identified, as well as the incredible commitment to Farkash’s compliance demonstrated by Irons’ willingness to house Farkash for the duration of the proceedings and offer his own house as collateral for Farkash’s bond.
Farkash’s lawyer also dismissed the complaint presented by the government as sparse, containing no evidence or certification from an actual victim or law enforcement officer in Israel for what was asserted, and implied that the students who made the allegations may have had other motives for making them.
The US Attorney argued that this was not a normal bail hearing since it involved extradition and not a crime charged in the United States, and therefore the burden on the defendant to prove eligibility for bail was higher. She pointed out that he was already allegedly a fugitive from Israel, and argued that while the government wasn’t concerned about him fleeing to Israel, since that’s where he was wanted, they were instead concerned about him disappearing into the community in Lakewood.
She also raised concerns about the fact that by living with Irons Farkash would be living in a house where children lived, and raised further concerns over the fact that Farkash had been working at a K-12 girls school when he was apprehended.
The judge then addressed Farkash saying that while she sympathized with the health challenges faced by his wife and children, and recognized Farkash’s connections to the community and Rabbi Irons’ extraordinary willingness to ensure Farkash’s compliance, she was nonetheless denying Farkash’s bond. She found that none of the circumstances Farkash presented qualified as special purposes to qualify him for bond during an extradition proceeding, and that even if they did, there was a real concern for flight risk and danger to the community, especially since he would be staying in a house with children.

Posted in Abuse, Lakewood | Comments Off on Report: Lakewood Resident, Rabbi Yechiel Farkash, Facing Extradition to Israel for Alleged Sexual Abuse of Students at Bnei Brak Yeshiva Where He Taught, Denied Bond Ahead of Extradition Hearing