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Showing posts with label Rabbi Bleich. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rabbi Bleich. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 22, 2022

Before you donate to "Bleich" the "Ukraine Chief Rabbi" Read this

 


First: who is Bleich, and how did he get to Ukraine? 
Bleich comes from a "centrist" yeshivish family in the NY area. After an incident that damaged his reputation in the Telz high school in Chicago, Bleich began learning in a Stolin (chassidish) yeshiva in Israel.

According to this @nytimes article, Bleich came to Ukraine in 1989, at age 25, with the backing of Stolin. He managed to get the pulpit of the historic Great Choral Synagogue and established day schools, camps and other religious programs.

https://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/06/world/kiev-journal-out-of-ukraine-s-torment-a-jewish-flowering.html

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In 1992, Bleich was "appointed" chief rabbi of Ukraine. He was never officially elected. But that didn't seem to matter. Within a few years, he had connections to the most powerful people in Ukraine, including the famously corrupt President Leonid Kuchma (Wikipedia him).

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Bleich also gained prominence in the larger Jewish world. Until 2018, he was the official representative of the Stoliner Rebbe of Jerusalem. Later, he became VP of World Jewish Congress and member of the executive committee of the Conference of European Rabbis (CER).

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One of the things Bleich did as chief rabbi was establish an outreach-oriented high school for Ukrainian Jewish girls and boys. Many of these children had little Jewish affiliation, and some lived in a dorm near Bleich's home--both of which put them in a vulnerable position.
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Over the course of several years, Bleich is alleged to have sexually abused girls from this school, others who attended his summer camp, employees of his programs, and Orthodox female volunteers from North America who came to work in the summer camp.