Debate, Part II

Best to read part one below for the start of the story. It contains all the proper disclaimers.

What, you may ask, could be worse than a child molester? Another good question, and the answer goes right to the heart of the behavior of the Orthodox Jewish community here in New York, and where I think it stands.

As I said in the first post, rumors about this guy have been floating around for years. And how has the community, specifically the school I went to that has employed him for close to thirty years, responded to the allegations? Cover-up. Obfuscation. Legalese. Hunkering down and protecting against the prying eyes of the outside world. If you believe the magazine article, physical intimidation and threats of virtual expulsion from the polite society that forms Orthodox Brooklyn. And the driving force behind this approach?

The so-called principal, so-called "Rosh Hayeshiva" (Head of the School) of my elementary and high schools.

According to the story, Mr. X. (I won't dignify him and demean the title by calling him rabbi) kept the molester on staff despite the accusations; threatened parents and victims who complained with expulsion from school and ostracization; rigged the Jewish courts investigating the complaints; etc., etc. I always described the guy as the Black Santa Claus - 5'2", 350 lbs., bald & big white beard, dressed all in black. I should have called the guy a mobster - the Orthodox Godfather.

You know what the friend who brought this to my attention and I decided, immediately? "Yeah, that sounds exactly like Mr. X." Fits right into the pattern of the man we knew 20 years ago. We knew him as a sharp businessman, and a guy who would do whatever it took for the school he built. Such dedication is admirable, but results can be achieved in positive and negative ways, and he frankly has no scruples. He's no Talmid Chacham (a term used for scholars) - my cousins, to the right of me religiously, always just laughed at the guy, for what a joke he was.

And this school, in the years since I was there (and even during my time there) has become the epitome of Jewish Orthodox education among the majority subset of Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn. This institution dedicated to the education of thousands of young boys and men over the years harbored a child molester for most of its existence. Could they have fired him? Sure. Should they have? Without question. Could they have tried to get the molester help? Probably.

What did they do? They covered up. They sat on it. Whatever else the molester brought them was more important than the health and well-being of the students. This twisted principal put his school and his own success ahead of children placed in his care. That's sick, wrong, and criminal. Look, I can tell you personal stories I witnessed or participated in that involve lying, cheating, and stealing. But this is far, far worse. People's lives were at stake here, and they not only ignored it, they abetted it.

People might wonder how I could grow up in such a right-wing community (the "yeshivishe velt", yeshiva world) and have moved, relatively speaking, so far left to the "Modern Orthodox" world. Part of the answer is simple - I'm a more worldly sort of person, always have been, and I fit better here. The other answer is based on situations like this. The hypocrisy exhibited by some members of the yeshiva world (and let me be clear - I mean only the Brooklyn world of my own experience) is beyond acceptance. I was often treated by people in that school and in that world as being half-treyf - a bad Jew who was somehow less than them because of my more modern leanings.

And yet the actions of a Mr. X are somehow holier than mine? A man who steals? Lies? Intimidates? This is your ideal of a Jew? As Zell Miller put it, "I didn't leave the Yeshiva World, the Yeshiva World left me." Oh, I know not all yeshiva Jews are like this - my own cousins are, I think, paragons of what that mode of life is supposed to be like. Dedication to Torah and Torah study, and behavior that is, in nearly everything I've seen from them, L'shem Shomayim - for the sake of Heaven.

But when Mr. X's yeshiva is the "Harvard of Yeshivas" (which, when I saw it in print, sent me ROTFLMAO)? That's your idea of perfection? No, thanks. Keep your world. Its values and ideals are screwed up beyond repair. Your holy men are false, your sanctity is vanity, your religion is twisted. I do not claim to know the mind of God. I do not claim to be a good, much less a perfect Jew. I do claim that this is not Judaism as God intended it to be. I do claim that actions speak louder than dress or words.

It is a miracle, perhaps, that with all I saw as an impressionable young man, that I remained true to Judaism. Many others saw what I saw, and took the obvious lesson - these people are full of crap, and if this is what Judaism is, I want no part of it. I have been blessed to be able to separate the word and intentions of God from the actions of man. But I have turned my back on that world for my own reasons, and they have been borne out.

May God comfort the victims, and may He have mercy on the rest of us for behaving as we do.