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| Sarit Horowitz |
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| Commander Noy Medkar |
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| Chief Investigator a Chareidie Sgt Yaakov Meir |
Sarit Hurwitz was forced to carry a dark secret on her shoulders throughout her childhood.
For decades, she kept silent, while her father, the well-known rabbi Eliyahu Godlevsky, sexually abused her and her sisters inside the family home in Bnei Brak.
It was only at the age of 35, after a personal journey across seas and continents, that she showed up at the police station in Israel to do the unbelievable – to stand in front of her father to tell her story, and to make him pay the price.
"When I was pregnant with my son, the PTSD erupted in full force," she tells N 12magazine from her home in Chicago. "I realized that time was running out. It ignited an inner fire in me. I felt I had to take action."
She made the decision to confront her father following the exposure of several affairs that dealt with sexual abuse within the ultra-Orthodox community.
Hurwitz recalls how her father came out against Rabbi Eliezer Berland, while she says he hurt her in the same way. "I said to him on the phone, 'How dare you? Aren't you ashamed? Just sit home and be quiet,"
Later came the story of the writer Chaim Walder, who took his own life after testimonies of sexual abuse of girls were published.
"When I heard about his injuries and how he ended his life, it shook me. I was afraid that my father would also die without being held accountable. I said to myself – I won't let that happen."
After the sexual abuse committed by Yehuda Meshi Zahav was also exposed, Horowitz decided to take action.
"I booked a flight ticket to Israel on my own," she recalls. "I came to Israel without telling anyone. Just four hours before landing, I sent a message to my nearest sister. I knew I was opening a huge wound, but there was also no other way to clean it. That was the moment of decision – to open up everything, tell everything, and embark on a new life."
Now, for the first time, the investigation that led to the conviction of the well-known rabbi has being revealed.
The head of the investigation team, Sgt. Yaakov Meir, and Commander Noy Madkar, an officer in the Violence and Sexual Offenses Division in the Dan Region of the Israel Police, a chareidie, who led the investigation, recount how the process that led to the conviction of the well-known rabbi was conducted.
"When Sarit first entered the room, she was shaking," the investigators recall the first meeting with Hurwitz, then a young ultra-Orthodox American woman they didn't know. "It started like another case of suspected sexual offenses, allegedly," said the commander. "But the more details and testimonies of the young woman and her sisters' past were detailed before us, the more we realized that this case would still shake us deeply."
In April 2024, following the investigation, Godlevsky was convicted of committing sexual offenses against his three daughters. He was later sentenced to ten years in prison, suspended imprisonment and compensation to the victims.
"It was a victory, but also a moment of anxiety," Hurwitz recalls. "There is no punishment that is enough for this. I've been carrying it for 30 years. I don't feel that there is justice, but at least my truth has come out."
Hurwitz returns to the moment when she arrived in Israel to reveal the terrible secret she has carried all her life.
From the airport, she drove to the Dan District police station in Bnei Brak, where she recounted the abuse she had endured for days
. "Sometimes I left the station at midnight," she describes. "Investigator Noy stopped me several times in the middle, saying that it was hard for her to hear – but that she had to know everything in order to be able to act. She kept saying, 'I believe you.' It was the first time anyone believed me completely."
After she gave her testimony, a confrontation took place between her and her father at the police station. "It was a kind of victory. To see him handcuffed and legged. I told him, 'Look how you're bound and I'm free. Now I'm letting this story go from me, you'll sit in jail and I'll go out to life.'"
The abusive father continued to deny her claims to her and to the interrogators. "He kept telling me, 'Liar, liar,' trying to claim that I was ungrateful for him giving me money. I replied: 'You're the one who should be ashamed, not me.'"
During our conversation, Hurwitz recalled that Rabbi Godlevsky began speaking Yiddish during the confrontation, and was immediately stopped by the interrogators. "Here we speak in a language that we all understand. You'll speak Hebrew here," the interrogator, Sgt. Meir, commanded him.
Despite the great sense of relief, the testimony and the legal process also took a heavy toll on Sharit. "I don't have any contact with most of the family," she says sadly. "As soon as I told the story, some were angry with me, others ignored me. I live in Chicago, alone, and I had nothing to lose. As far as I'm concerned, the family is lost, it's just me and my truth."
The investigators return to the first testimony given by Horowitz, at the end of December 2023, which lasted for many hours. "She began to tell," recalls Commander Medkar, "to take down another layer and layer, carefully trying to reveal another shocking detail from her past. I saw how every word wounded her anew. I thought it was another harsh testimony about a man who hurt her, but when she told me, 'That was my father.' I felt like I was suffocating." Sgt. Meir adds: "As soon as she mentioned his name – Godlevsky – my eyes darkened. It is a well-known rabbi, head of a well-known community in Breslov, a revered rabbi, a popular lecturer among the repentant. A character I know, maybe I even heard a lesson from him once."
During the days of testimony and undercover investigation, the two investigators managed to formulate a series of serious charges against the well-known rabbi, for systematically committing sexual offenses against his three daughters.
The rabbi's arrest was carried out in the middle of the night, and in order to prevent riots, he was "pulled" out of his bed. When the interrogator Meir met him at the police station, the rabbi seemed to not understand what all the fuss was about, but the tone quickly changed.
"You know you're playing with fire," the rabbi told the interrogator. Sgt. Meir understood that this was a kind of threat. "In ultra-Orthodox culture, the concept of 'playing with fire' towards a Talmid Chacham is considered a real curse. He hinted to me that I was taking a risk – even in the hands of Heaven," explains Sgt. Meir.
"In the first interrogation, he denied it outright, demanded to know which of his daughters dared to complain and make false accusations against him," the veteran interrogator recalls. "In his second interrogation, he maintained his right to remain silent." As far as the investigators are concerned, the third interrogation took the turn they had hoped for.
"He broke," they say. This happened after a recording was played to him, in which he expressed remorse and admitted to sexually touching the three girls, above their clothes. "It was the first time he confessed to something," said Sgt. Meir. "Even when he said 'I'm sorry,' he didn't really break down. Not like the girls. He just understood that there was no way to get away anymore."
As far as the investigators were concerned, from that moment on, the door was opened for further testimonies and confrontations.
In one of those confrontations between the rabbi and his daughters, the daughter slammed him: "Do you know that there was a vehicular attack this week? Two children were murdered there. You're a murderer, too. You murdered me every day." Godevsky remained cold, and the daughter went on to ask: "Do you remember how you used to get into my bed? You taught me that hurting is love. All these years I was silent because I was afraid that you would die if found out. Today I know you're dead from the inside anyway."
In a confrontation with another daughter, she looked at him and said, "I'm not here to forgive. I'm here to hear you say: I remember everything. I remember what you did to me and how you hurt me. I'm not the girl who was silent then. Today I'm talking." Another daughter cried during the confrontation and said: "When I lay down at night and saw the door open, I prayed that you would go to sleep. You didn't go. You came to me. I prayed for you to die, and then I felt guilty for praying it."
After the daughters and the father, the investigators also turned to the mother of the family, and they define her testimony as particularly significant and important. According to the investigators, the mother's interrogation was lengthy and full of contradictions.
"He loved them, it was all out of warmth and love," the mother said at first, denying any testimony or difficult details revealed by the girls. But later she found out that she, too, had been recorded as trying to hide the injury.
"Don't tell anyone, hide it, Dad was just trying to educate you with love," the mother was heard saying in one of the recordings.
"I asked her," says the interrogator, "'How could it be that you didn't hear the screams that came out of the room at night? How come you didn't act?' and the mother answered, 'I thought they were having a bad dream.' When I pressed her again, she was silent, dropped her head and turned pale."
Before the end of the interview, I asked the interrogators if there were any things that came up during the investigation of the affair that accompany them to this day.
"During the testimonies, the girls said a lot of sentences that don't get out of my head," recalls Commander Medak.
"One of them said:
'Every time I take a shower and I hear one of my children screaming, the reflex is that something happened. I go out with a towel to my husband and immediately ask him, 'What did you do to them?'" Another daughter said: "I'm in bed with my husband, and he's there. My father. Sitting next to me. Always."
"It was the most difficult interrogation of my life," says Sgt. Meir. "I realized that there was only one I could believe in – God. Everything else? Everything can collapse." Madkar concludes: "There are investigation files that you close – and there are those that will never leave you. This is one of them."
Sarit Hurwitz returns to the difficult emotions that flooded her in court:
"In the end, you become a witness, not a victim. The state is suing on your behalf, and you feel alienated from both the family and the system." She also recounts how her father tried to apologize to her in court:
"It was disgusting to hear him ask for forgiveness. I said to myself: 'It's too late. If you really wanted to, you would have gone to therapy years ago.'"
After Godevsky was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison, his name remained under a gag order – something that did not give his daughters any rest. Together with the legal assistance of the Ministry of Justice, the daughters filed a request to reveal their father's name, and thus the affair was allowed to be published.
"When I received this case, at first I didn't understand its intensity," recalls attorney Likol Tamsut, who represented the victims.
"Three daughters versus a father who is also a well-known rabbinical figure – it was clear that double sensitivity was required here. The legal work is the same job, but here I had to be both a psychologist, a mother, and a close accompaniment. In the end, I can say that Sarit is a model. Her every step cracked the wall of silence a little more."
Regarding the sisters' request to reveal the name of the convicted father, Attorney Tamsut says:
"I understood their difficulty because they were required to remain silent following the gag order in the affair. After the order was lifted, the victims are happy that justice has finally been served, after years of suffering, and after more than two years have passed since the complaint was filed."
The State Attorney's Office also congratulated the girls for their courage in exposing the assaults they underwent as children. The prosecutor in the case, Attorney Rosie Kabaz of the Tel Aviv District Attorney's Office (Criminal), said: "The girls' courage to speak up and complain is that it is possible to reveal the truth about what happened in the family unit, and therefore even when the home, which is supposed to be the safest place for the children, has ceased to be a fortress – there is no room for silence. Although the punishment and compensation for the complainants will not be able to heal the wounds, they have the power to send a clear message of condemnation and justice."
Today, as someone who has survived the long road to justice, Horowitz wants to convey a message to other women who have been harmed:
"Don't leave it inside. Wait for the right moment and for the right person to believe you. I say to the little girl I was – it's great that you were silent then, because otherwise they would have made you mentally ill. But when the moment comes, speak up. Believe yourself. It's not a service to the public, it's a service to yourself. You deserve to live."
Sarit in her childhood
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