Rav Edelstein was nowhere to be found when just a year ago a young girl from his kehila jumped off the roof after being sexually abused by her teacher. There isn't a word from R' Edelstein about the torment and torture of the victims.
It's all over folks! Unless the victims embarrass and shame themselves in identifying themselves and approach R' Edelstein and tell them their stories!
Monsters like Walder will continue to flourish and the victims destroyed if this continues.
I am sitting on a story about Belz in Yerushalayim that will make your hair fall out. I cannot post it because of the libel laws, but the perp continues to molest his victims and the victims are being thrown out of the moisdois if they say one word. Two Hebrew Chareidie blogs have been threatened if they expose the culprit.
A senior haredi rabbi lashed out Tuesday against a rabbinic campaign to shame children’s author and radio personality Chaim Walder, saying the efforts had led to Walder’s suicide and were tantamount to murder.
Rabbi Gershon Edelstein, dean of the Ponovezh Yeshiva in Bnei Brak and spiritual leader of the United Torah Judaism’s Degel Hatorah faction, was quoted in a letter written to haredi educators Tuesday responding to Walder’s suicide in a Petah Tikva cemetery Monday, amid allegations of sexual misconduct.
“It is totally obvious that the great pressure on him is what led him to mental illness and forced him to commit suicide.”
In the letter, Rabbi Edelstein urged haredi school teachers to refrain from weighing in on the Walder scandal.
“Even if there is a teacher who thinks that he has an opinion in the matter, etc., it is imperative to only tell the children the Torah perspective, and to warn how dangerous it is to publicly humiliate someone, and to tell them that bad people smeared him everywhere to the point that he was too embarrassed to show his face in public, causing him to become mentally unwell to the point that he killed himself.”
Walder, 53, was best known for his series of children’s books, Children Talk About Themselves.
He hosted a radio show on Radio Kol Hai, and penned a regular column in the Yated Ne’eman newspaper.
Prior to his suicide, Walder faced accusations of sexual misconduct and abuse, including a report by Ha’aretz which cited the claims of 22 alleged victims, including underage boys and girls.
A special rabbinical court summoned Walder earlier this month to appear for a hearing into the matter.
Walder had denied the accusations, and in a suicide note, reiterated his claims of innocence, challenging the rabbis leading the public shaming efforts against him to a “Torah trial in heaven.”
10 comments:
The swift, harsh public response to the Walder allegations is a warning to all of us that this behavior is as damaging as a nuclear blast. We owe it to each other to respect each other's spouses and children. The tragedy of Chaim Walder will teach us more than his books ever did. There is grotesque situation where youthful indiscretions of flirtatious and excitable young people are harshly punished, yet serial molestations are swept under the carpet. Parents of these scarred and broken children must be heard, along with the children themselves. If loud publicity doesn't get the message across I fear that vigilante justice, accompanied by poetically just anatomical modifications, may not be far off.
by the way i know about a scandal in Belz Komemiyut, was not aware they are having issues in yerushamayim too.
that is bad, it shows when they try to hush up a problem and don't deal with it it metastasizes and now they are having the same situation in yerushamayim.
I hope they learn from their mistakes, to take accusations seriously and deal with a manageable problem before it blows up in their faces.
I am sitting on a story about Belz in Yerushalayim that will make your hair fall out. I cannot post it because of the libel laws
https://www.joe.co.uk/life/men-losing-hair-97157
If you tip off bloggers like UOJ, they are outside the jurisdiction of Israel's censor.
Well, well, well, rabbi avinar, who's Chas veshalom not Hareidi thinks the same as Rav gershon, while Rav eliyahoo that was always considered an extremist attention seeker, argues
Rabbi Ededstein was talking ONLY about what to say to kids. And only that. Kids are very bewildered by what happened. You can have your opinion of Chaim Walder, but best not try to explain that to kids.
7:12
One could argue that what R' Edelstein did was even worse than what Walder did. Kids have to be told that if they are being touched even by a rebbe or by a therapist they should report it immediately,they should be told that Walder was a predator even though he was a therapist.
Rav Edelstein shlita may be unaware of the recording where Walder stated explicitly to a woman he had an affair with that he will kill himself if it becomes public. This was some time before he was subjected to public cancellation. So suicide was his plan all along — it was not the result of mental
Illness from intolerable humiliation, as difficult as that is for a rebbe to explain to talmidim. He led a double life for many years and grew increasingly emboldened when he realized he could get away with anything. But now his world was tumbling down, and he followed through on his plan. Coming clean and doing teshuva was not an option acceptable to him, though he encouraged exactly that in many of his stories. All those condemning the Zionist Rav Eliyahu for butting into the internal affairs of the Chareidi world should realize that he was begged to get involved because no Chareidi Beis Din would touch it. Rav Edelstein would do well to account for why Walder was not dealt with internally. Those in the Chareidi world (not CVS Rav Edelstein) who knew and had the opportunity to stop Walder but didn’t are guilty of destroying all those souls he ruined.
Walder did not only live with married women and ruin countless lives, he also raped young kids essentially killing them. The olam haba status of a rapist should be akin to one who publicly embarreses someone as both are ab act of murder. Thirdly, there is a concept in hilchos L”H of ‘sani shumanei’, a person who has multiple accusers that he transgressed a serious sin like arayos is allowed to be shunned publicly and one is allowed to believe the story. Furthermore, a beis din took trstimony and claims to have incontrovertible evidence implicating him on terrible sins. This is not a case of loshon Hora killing someone but a tragic story of a sick and dangerous person who sucked the soul out of his victims and couldn’t face the music when the time came to face the consequences for his actions. Gedalia ben Achikam got killed for not believing L”H and we are still reeling from that story till this day! Wake up!
Walder victim,
Shain geredt, very eloquent!
Chazak ve'ematz!
Who knows if Rav Gershon was even told about the Beis Din that heard 22 testimonies; he only knows what his close followers tell him. Who knows what he was told
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