The Weberman Trial, or: The Wolf Who Cried Bias

By David Lerner
The Satmar community sees itself as the victim in the Weberman case. Which brings to mind the saying in the Talmud: “They commit the act of Zimri and demand the reward of Pinchas.”
“The man who lies to himself can be more easily offended than anyone else.” ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

King Alexander Jannaeus once warned his wife that the only people one needs to fear are pseudo-pious hypocrites. “They commit the act of Zimri and demand the reward of Pinchas,” he said, and this is exactly what came to mind in the aftermath of Nechemya Weberman’s trial and the surreal attempts by the Satmar Hasidic community to paint itself as the victim.
Nechemya Weberman has by now been found guilty on 59 charges, including sexual abuse of children, and the following is now abundantly clear: The Satmar Hasidic community, on our watch, protects and shelters abusers of children. This is no longer a matter for debate, but an irrefutable fact.
The community’s reaction to recent events has been truly bizarre. Community members argue that they have been unfairly depicted in the media; journalists and columnists, they claim, are biased and use anti-Semitic imagery. But the most widespread gripe is that the entire community was put on trial, and that’s unfair! Weberman’s own defense attorney, George Farkas, employed this canard in his opening statement at trial, alleging that the victim had “great vengeance and furious anger … against Nechemya Weberman, and [sought] through this to bring down the entire community that either supported him, or of which he was a part.”
In a recent interview with the squalid Ami magazine, Farkas reiterated much of this, arguing essentially: The jury didn’t get the whole truth, but I can’t tell you what that is. One can perhaps forgive George Farkas; he’s an attorney defending his client. What I do take issue with is his assertion that: “I think they [Satmar] have the right to distrust her.”
With those words, Farkas is going beyond defending Weberman. He is essentially excusing all the intimidation that led up to the trial, and restating the fatuous “the entire community was on trial.”
If there is any merit to this rather grandiose claim, it is only because the community inserted itself into the proceedings with their own actions; it is they alone who put themselves on trial. Let us review how this very community has reacted in response to the allegations against Weberman.
On May 16th of this year, the Satmar community threw an extremely well-publicized and well-attended fundraiser for Weberman, a man then accused of truly heinous acts. It is reported that they sought to raise $500,000 at this event for Weberman’s defense. Some of the publicity might be credited to victim advocates protesting at the event, but Satmar made no pretense of discretion; the event was widely announced via Yiddish posters all over Williamsburg. That their support for Weberman was meant for public consumption is further evidenced by the hiring of an unlettered PR hack; a man whose Twitter bio contains the laughable falsehood: “My Opinions are Based on Facts; Not Ideology [sic].” Employing his unique brand of casuistry, he assured the media that this was all about ensuring justice, a fair trial, and the American Way. (Justice for the victim? They overlooked that American tradition, it seems.)
A mere few weeks later it became clear that some people were willing to invest substantial capital in making this case disappear. Four Hasidic men were arrested on charges of bribery: they tried to buy the victim’s silence and/or departure with $500,000. Some will argue that these men were acting on their own, that there is no connection between the two events, but I trust intelligent and literate people to review the sequence of events and draw their own conclusion.
Let us also review what happened to the victim and her family for pursuing justice:
They have been subject to numerous threats of bodily harm.
They have been expelled from schools and synagogues.
They have had their businesses defaced and boycotted.
They have become the objects of widespread slander, dismissed as the dregs of their own society.
Satmar men photographed the accuser in court, necessitating precautions usually reserved for gang trials. (One of the men claimed to be a supporter of the victim; if that is the case he is only guilty of ignorance.)
Near the end of the trial came the most damning news of all: Schoolchildren were being recruited to prayfor Weberman’s acquittal. Teachers received instructions to employ their students in beseeching God on behalf of “the important activist” falsely accused by “debased and lowly people.” For extra weight, the instructions quoted the Shemone Esreh prayer–“May there be no hope for informants”–implying that Weberman’s accuser was deserving, as the prayer hopes, “instant annihilation.”
There is so much more: the Anthony Comstock-esque Vaad Hatznius, the perjury of the school principal denying its existence, the intimidation of Weberman’s other victims who have not yet come forward, the cowardice of Weberman’s anonymous defenders on Twitter and other social media, and much more. All these point to the same inevitable conclusion: Weberman, a man accused of monstrous offenses against children, received widespread support from the community.
And still they cry: “The community was put on trial!”
It wasn’t. It was never about the community–until they themselves made it so.
We often compare people who shout inflammatory lies to The Boy who Cried Wolf. The more conventional moral to that fable is that if one wishes to deceive, do not employ the same falsehood over and over. This eludes Satmar, one of whose leaders referred to the young girl as a “whore”–a classic tactic among those who blame victims for their abuse. But in this case, there is a unique twist to it: In Aaesop’s classic fable, the boy who cried wolf does not directly lead the wolf to his flock; the same cannot be said of Satmar. The Satmar community led the victim directly to her predator, then rejoiced in protecting, defending, and sheltering him.
Satmar had a real wolf but ignored it, and then cried about an imaginary wolf: the outside world and the media. That is disgraceful.
After all is said and done, each of us can only be responsible for our own actions and inactions. I do not believe in collective guilt, but ultra-Orthodox Jews as a group must do some serious soul-searching over how they handle criminals within their community: Child sexual abuse exists and is a serious problem; Mesirah, as Rabbi Eli Fink argued in a recent blog post, is an outdated concept that needs to be discarded; rabbinical courts do not have the power to deal with sexual predators save for the same power we all have: involving the police. The sooner all this is realized the better it will be for children. Change can happen only when more Chasidim defy societal taboos against talking about abuse and reporting abusers; maintaining the status quo will only bring about more victims.
Finally, it is no secret that many (although certainly not all) of the victim’s advocates are “OTD,” or “Off the Derech,” the people who have left the path of Orthodox and Hasidic Judaism. These men and women, including myself, are repeatedly asked: “Why do you care?” In other words: you guys left the community, so why don’t you just mind your own business?! This echoes the “outside agitators” claim used by every tyrant in dismissing calls for change, and deflects the issue entirely. But still, as a former Hasid and an “OTD” myself, I will offer this in response:
We grew up in these communities. The victims are our sisters, our brothers, our friends. We personally know many victims of abuse who have not come forward for fear of retaliation. Yes, it is true we no longer share your religious views, but we are still your brothers and sisters. We see protecting children as the most universal human value. We intimately know this community and its attitudes; we don’t want to destroy them, we want them to protect their most vulnerable members.
That is why we care, and that is why we will not remain silent.

Weberman made our daughters into "zoines"

The horrifying saga of the Nechemya Weberman trial and the guilty verdict on 59 or 60 of the consolidated counts has caught the attention of the world.

If the allegations are true, as guilty verdicts tend to indicate, and as the existence of 11 other victims too fearful to step forward indicates, then what we have here is truly sickening.

We have a 12-year-old girl that did not quite meet the standards of the community around her. The school officials refused to admit her back into the school unless her parents pre-paid for therapy—to the tune of $12,900.

And then she suffers three years of horrifying abuse at the hands of the very “therapist” that the school had required her to meet with regularly. Imagine the pain of such a girl who must endure the sickest of acts—with the knowledge that no one would believe her if she told of what was being done to her.

The Navi cries out, “Bagda Yehuda v’soaivah ne’esasa b’Yisrael!” Our schools are named after our heilege imahos and avos. And the matriarch, Mama Rachel, is crying now. Of that there is no doubt.

Our schools have handed over these precious souls to monsters for abuse. And then, when they ultimately come forward, we vilify them and their families. We exclude them from our camps and our schools.

Hakezona ya’aseh es achoseini?

And this was aided and abetted by the kehilah leadership, rachmana litzlan! The kehilah leadership! Not even a brush full of the blackest of paint could put such horrors on a canvas!

Has there ever been such a parallel in our entire history?

During the reign of Nicholas the First, y’s, in Tsarist Russia, we had something close, when he initiated the heartless conscription of precious Jewish children for 25 years in the Russian army. The kehillah leadership selected the recruits. They were from the weakest of the weak, the young boys of defenseless widows. The kehillah had hired vicious people called, “khappers” who would do the vile deeds.

It was the Bubby of Yehuda Leib Katzenelson, who best related the dark history of this time, a history that finds parallel in our very own times now too:

“First I thought that the khappers could only be Plishtim or mizera Amalek. But no, my child, to my horror, to our great shame and horror, the khappers, all of the khappers were, in fact, Yidden. Yidden mit beard un payos! And that is our greatest problem. We Jews are accustomed to attacks, lies, libels, and evil decrees from anti-Semites, yes. This has happened from the dawn of time, and such is our lot in the galus. In the past, our enemies held a cross in one hand and a knife in the other and said, “Jew! Kiss the cross or feel the blade of the knife!” and Jews preferred death rather than conversion. But now there comes Yidden, fruma Yidden, who capture children and send them off to oblivion. Such a punishment was not even listed in the most horrible curses of the toychacha. Yidden spilling the blood of their brothers! And, rachmana litzlan, the rabbanim are silent!”

Her words, so poignant and so painful, describe the fate of this dear daughter of Williamsburg as well, who suffered not once but twice! Once at the hand of her tormentor and again at the hands of our community who so abandoned her.

The horrifying reality is that all this was brought about by the existence of a so-called “Vaad HaTzniyus!” Clearly, we need to do teshuvah. We need a teshuvah so profound and deep that it should shake the very mountains that surround us.

This op-ed does not mean to question the notion of an institution that watches over tzniyus within Torah communities. The need for an oversight committee to ensure that matters between the genders do not get out of hand is established both in the Talmud, the Shulchan Aruch, as well as in the codes and laws of numerous societies and nations throughout history.

What we are questioning, however, is how this particular Vaad HaTzniyus is staffed and operated. The revelations made in this trial and by various people who have been in touch with rabbanim as to their experiences are appalling.

It seems, unfortunately, that we have allowed this institution to run amok, staffed by corrupt individuals, who have lost all sense of propriety in what types of behaviors the Torah demands of us. The Weberman case reveals the tip of the iceberg in how low we have sunk in terms of corruption, extortion, and yes, violations of arayos.

If we look into the halachic sources, the officers of these organizations must be an extension of a beis din. It is sad to say that in this Vaad HaTzniyus, there is no affiliation whatsoever with the community beis din—they are gangs of self-appointed ruffians with little or no Torah training whatsoever, who use threats and intimidations to line their own pockets or to fulfill some psychological need to exert power over others. In short, the Williamsburg community must face up to what we have allowed to develop within our midst.

We have our own home-brewed mafia.

This mafia is not represented by poskim, rabbanim, or by batei dinim. Indeed, our Torah leaders are frightened to take a stand against their excesses. We need to take steps to remedy this situation, and we need to do so now.

Firstly, we must abolish the current organizations now and disenfranchise them from any power base that we can. The Vaad HaTzniyus organizations and everyone involved in them must be directly run by batei dinim and poskim. The beis din must have oversight over every individual involved in these activities and anything said and done must have the approval of qualified poskim.

Secondly, like in other areas of halacha, the beis din should have the ability to consult with trained experts in the medical, psychological, social work, and legal fields to assist and advise in their decision as to what is proper and appropriate. Violations of hilchos yichud with a 12-year-old girl is never appropriate, notwithstanding Mr. Weberman’s horrible and incorrect misrepresentation that hilchos yichud is not a Torah violation.

Thirdly, we cannot have the chillul Hashem of forcing clients, students, or others who may have stumbled to attend “therapy sessions” with non-professionals who happen to be our own family members. Therapists should only be of the same gender as the client, and must be unrelated to the one pushing the recommendation. As Torah Jews we must make every effort to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Here we have what appears to be gross and wholesale “scams.” The chilul Hashem that we have all witnessed here in the past two years is of a dimension never seen in our history.

And finally, we must end the culture of punishing those who come forward. The menahelim of the schools that refused admittance to family of those who came forward must be either removed from their positions or severely warned. They must be identified and told not to do so again. We must learn the lesson of this toeivah that happened in Klal Yisrael and make sure that it never happen again.

In the early 1850’s when the great gaon and tzaddik Rav Eliyahu Shik of Grodno found out about the kehillah’s involvement in the horrible reality of khapping yiddisher kinder, he called upon everyone to “revolt and rebel against the heads of the kehilah, to tear the kahal building to shreds.” He himself ran with an axe in his hand in front of the crowd that had gathered, each man armed with an axe. Before they were stopped they had broken the iron bolts on the door of the kahal building and freed the three young men that were held there.

Our reaction must be to immediately dissolve this Vaad HaTzniyus which forced Yiddishe girls into the hands of a monster. Their names should be recorded and never again must such people be put in charge of such grave matters of responsibility. A vaad of tzniyus must only be direct representatives of choshuvah and leading poskim well respected throughout the Torah world. And no matter who it may be, which meyuchasdika person, we must never forget the holy words of Chazal, “Ein apitropus l’arayos—no one, absolutely no one can be trusted alone in matters of arayos.”