Did R' Belsky rule that the "LA Meat" was kosher because his son-in-law benefitted?

Oh Oh! 
Well Frum Follies, an investigative blogger says it so! 
Read it and make up your own mind!

Owning a well-run, established business in a growing market is nice. But a monopoly in the same market – now that is splendid. Los Angeles may be heading to a kosher meat distribution monopoly.  Until shortly before Passover 2013, LA was divided into two kosher meat silos. Most of the kosher supervision (hashgachah) in town was provided by the Rabbinical Council of California (RRC). Every restaurant, caterer and retail shop under the RRC had to buy their meat from the RRC certified distributer, Doheney Kosher Meats. The smaller Kehilla Kosher certification (under Rabbi Avrohom Teichman)  required their establishments to buy meat from Western Kosher.  In effect, there was a meat distribution monopoly within each hashgachah.

Then a tsunami overturned this tidy arrangement. According to the LA Times,

The controversy started Sunday when a video taken by a private investigator surfaced, purporting to show Doheny workers bringing in boxes of meat late at night without the required supervision of the independent inspector, known as amashgiach, tasked with overseeing the store. The video later aired on KTLA-TV Channel 5. After viewing the videotape, the Rabbinical Council of California pulled Doheny’s kosher certification. A group of rabbis also met with Michael Engelman, Doheny’s owner. According to the council, Engelman initially denied any wrongdoing but later “admitted to bringing unauthorized products to the store on two to three occasions.”

This scandal could have turned into a disaster. It broke just before Passover. Imagine every caterer, restaurant, and kosher home that depended on RCC meat products being forced to toss their meat, kosher or replace their utensils, and start all over buying and cooking their food. Also consider the financial damages to consumers or businesses and their lawsuits against Doheney and the RCC.

The RCC evaded this disaster by issuing an announcement:

On Sunday March 24th, the RCC’s … leading members of the Vaad Hakashrus met and, assessing the evidence of policy violations as compelling, ordered the immediate removal of our certification……

In implementing that decision … the RCC consulted with Rav Yisroel Belsky, Rosh Yeshiva of Torah V’Daas and Posek for the OU Kashrut Division, and a nationally recognized kashrus authority. At 8pm, Rabbi Belsky issued his ruling, based on the application of normative Halachic principles, permitting the use of products purchased from the store prior to the suspension of the certification.

But the RCC’s problems were not over. Kehilla Kosher, the RCC’s main competitor did not embrace Belsky’s heter (lenient ruling). According to Yeshiva World News, on April 8 they announced,

As to the recent development involving Doheny Meats, Kehilla has not made any official statement nor has Kehilla authorized the publication of any position regarding whether or not there is a halachic need to kosher utensils in private homes, at business establishments or at catering establishments. (Moshe Zyskind, Chairman of the Board; Avrohom Teichman, Rav Hamachshir).

However, Kehilla, while it could cause some damage to the RCC, was not their biggest problem. The RCC needed to keep the meat distribution flowing, and given their policies and business interests they wanted it to be a distributor under their auspices. Returning the hashagachah to Engelman was not going to wash, not after those videos ran on local TV news.

Within a week, Doheney had a new owner, Shlomo Yehuda Rechnitz. Initial reports portrayed him as a white knight eager to rescue a vital community resource. According to the LA Jewish Journal,

Rechnitz, a prominent local businessman and philanthropist, has purchased Doheny…… on Sunday, March 31, just one week after … the RCC, revoked the store’s certification…… (as) “A favor to the community……

RCC President Rabbi Meyer H. May… (said)  “He’s going to preserve the richness of the meat supply and preserve the price structure for consumers.”

Rechnitz was one of a handful of non-rabbis who attended a hastily organized meeting on Sunday, March 24, when Engelman spoke to the RCC’s leadership and rabbis ……

Over the course of a week of negotiations, Rechnitz spent between eight and ten hours with Engelman; he said he does not believe Engelman brought the unsupervised products into Doheny to respond to specific customers’ requests, as some have suggested.

Rechnitz said Engelman himself couldn’t fully explain why he brought the unsupervised meat into the store,…… Money may not have been the motivating factor, Rechnitz said, “Because it wasn’t that much of a difference, based on the quantity.” ……

Over the course of the week of negotiations he became a bit more optimistic about the business prospects for the company. “I didn’t have time to send in a forensic accounting team,” he said, but Engelman told him that Doheny’s gross sales on the retail and distribution sides added up to approximately $8 million a year.

That said, Rechnitz said he hopes to remain a mostly silent investor in Doheny, and won’t aim to build its market share at the expense of other distributors……

In his philanthropic work, Rechnitz has also come to the aid of embattled organizations. Last year, in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, Rechnitz donated $1 million to an organization that supports Jewish day schools in the New York area. In 2011, Rechnitz donated $5 million to the Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem, which was struggling under millions in debt following the death of its chief rabbi and fundraiser. That same year, Rechnitz also helped save Chabad of California’s headquarters from foreclosure. But Rechnitz is also known for charitable giving of a very different sort. Every Saturday night, Jews line up outside his family’s home. Until six months ago, those who came walked away with checks; now they leave with gift cards to one of two kosher markets in the area near Fairfax and La Brea.

My first reaction was, wow, what a great guy! He made the culprit take a loss and he is going to sell it for the price he bought it. But then I remembered that Rechnitz was the son-in-law of Rabbi Yisroel Belsky, the man who ruled all meat bought before the closure could be presumed kosher. I knew Belsky based his ruling on the halachic principal of rov(majority) where we presume a particular item kosher under uncertain circumstances when we know that the majority of such items are kosher.

I am suspicious of Belsky. I know he is a lamdan (rabbinic scholar). But when it came to sex abuse he defended the innocence of the Kolkos because they insisted they were innocent. He maintained that position while refusing to talk to the accusers. That got me wondering how good a job he did in examining the facts in this case.

Did Belsky have any way of absolutely knowing how much non-approved meat was smuggled into the plant? Rechnitz says “that he believes Engelman with “99 percent” confidence” How the hell can Rechnitz or anyone besides Engelman know that with certainty? What sort of smart businessman trusts a known fraudster’s version when the guy has an incentive to minimize his culpability?

I would have been more impressed if the RCC reported that they did an intensive audit of Doheneys purchases and sales, and randomly verified his records by confirming them with outside buyers and sellers. Of course, they wouldn’t have been caught with their pants down if they had been doing that all along.

I also remembered that during the Rubashkin trial in 2009, prosecutors exhibited fabricated invoices to Doheney for more than a million dollars of meat when the actual debt was in the range of $300,000-$400,000. The prosecutors claimed that Rubashkin and Engelman colluded to inflate Rubashkin’s receivables to justify a larger credit line and to reduce Doheney’s tax liability. Naturally they both denied those allegations. With the benefit of hindsight I wonder if this was also a way for Doheney to fool the RCC about the size of his purchases from Rubashkin. I would hope that the RCC and Belsky seriously investigated that possibility. If he repeated that same maneuver several times a year with several suppliers, the majority of his sales of eight million dollars a year could easily have been based on meat not accounted for with purchases from kosher sources. Such numbers would have overturned any justification for a ruling based on rov.

The RCC had a conflict of interest when they investigated the fraud. They knew it was going to be exposed with video on local TV News (Link). So they had to fess up but they had motives for minimizing its scope to lessen the damage to their reputation and income.

How else can one explain the RCC claim that while the meat that was smuggled in was not glatt, it was kosher, even though they never had any proof? Incredibly, Rabbi May even admitted to a reporter, “We didn’t ask him for evidence”

So, now we have Belsky determining rov based on inadequate numbers and evidence from a sloppy investigation conducted by self-interested rabbis.

But wait, it gets worse. Rechnitz, the supposedly disinterested white-knight buyer of Doheney is not sticking to his plan of finding a buyer to restore the operation under RCC supervision. According to Jonah Lowenfeld of the Jewish Journal,

Shlomo Rechnitz … bought the shop [Doheney meats] and its distribution arm on March 31 and then transferred the agreement to David Kagan, owner of Western Kosher, the competing kosher retailer, on April 8.

Wow! LA is now a town with just one kosher meat distributor. Naturally the fight is on about which kosher agency will control it. According to the same article in the Jewish Journal,

Reached by phone on May 21, Kagan declined to comment. On Tuesday, Rechnitz declined to comment about the negotiations on the record, other than to say that they are ongoing. On that same day, [RCC President Rabbi Meyer] May said he isn’t sure exactly who currently owns the shop, but he appeared to be expecting Rechnitz to make good on his promise that the reopened Doheny would remain under the RCC’s certification. “We won’t accept that Doheny will open up under Kehilla,” May said. Whether the RCC would, in fact, be able to stop that from happening is unclear.

So now we have Rechnitz backing out of promises he made when he first got involved in the investigation and purchase. You don’t have to be a genius to realize a lot of money can be made buying a business at distressed prices and converting it into the final piece of a monopoly. Anyone who has ever traded the Monopoly Boardwalk card understands this. Rechnitz of course will claim he sold it for the price he bought it. But none of us know what that price was; the deal with Engelman included a non-disclosure agreement about the price.

I am sure Rechnitz appreciated the potential for profit in the deal. According to the LA Jewish Journal,

Rechnitz described the final selling price as “sizable,” but not as big as it might have been prior to the scandal……“It definitely came at a major discount due to the fact of what [Engelman] did, or what he tried to get away with,” Rechnitz said. “He definitely was not rewarded for his actions.”

Rechnitz has experience working with organizations at times of crisis. In his role as CEO of one of his companies, Brius Management Co., which manages multiple nursing homes across California, Rechnitz told a reporter in 2011 that his company looked mostly for “distressed facilities.”

Belsky shouldn’t have agreed to be a posek in this case. He had a conflict of interest. He knew, or should have anticipated that his son-in-law might make big bucks from his ruling. Belsky should also have offered some evidence of due diligence in his determinations other than the self-serving summaries of a superficial investigation conducted by culpable parties at the RCC and his son-in-law, Rechnitz.

Unfortunately, Belsky has a pattern of ruling in favor of his krovim (close ones) on the basis of their reports without listening to the opposing side. Belsky slandered the family of the victim of Yosef Kolko without even talking to them. He did the same for his buddy Yehuda (Joel) Kolko. Both ended up being convicted of the very abuse that Belsky denied. I have argued elsewhere that Belsky should be removed as Senior Posek of OU Kosher because of his misconduct.

Belsky’s defenders at the Orthodox Union (OU) insist that his bizarre antics about sex abuse are not pertinent to his qualifications as a posek for kosher. Maybe, now they can see that Belsky’s misconduct extends to kashrus as well.

Belsky’s dwindling band of defenders say he enhances the standing of the OU in the heimish world. Actually, his psak in LA is not working. Three establishments are already known to have dropped their RCC hashgachah and more are expected to make the shift in the coming weeks. It is time for the Orthodox Union to realize that Belsky isn’t just a bad posek; he is also a bad business decision.

Some people are writing the OU to demand that he publicly repudiate his position about the innocence of the Kolkos and his slander of the victims. I think these letter writers are aiming too low. The OU’s members and consumers deserve an honorable posek.

Let me offer a marketing argument to the mercenaries at the OU who insist they need Belsky for the heimish market. The OU cannot win by out-frumming its competitors. But it can demonstrate superior erlichkeit and integrity. They cannot win by using a beard like Belsky. They can win by showing they are worthy carriers of the legacy of the Rav, Joseph B. Soloveitchik. Of course he had and has his detractors in the heimish world. But very few in that world disputed his towering lomdus and integrity. It is time for the OU to draw on, and play to, the strengths of Modern Orthodoxy instead of cowering and trying to disavow their congregations and rabbis. Belsky is not the way to do it. Even if they insist on having a high profile heimish posek there are many worthy alternatives.

IRS sent ALL Pro-Israel Group Applications for tax-exempt status directly to anti-terrorism unit!

Applications of pro-Israel groups for tax-exempt status are routinely routed to an antiterrorism unit within the Internal Revenue Service for additional screening, according to the testimony of a Cincinnati-based IRS agent.
Asked whether Jewish or pro-Israel applications are treated differently from other applications, Gary Muthert told House Oversight Committee investigators that they are considered “specialty cases” and that “probably” all are sent to an IRS unit that examines groups for potential terrorist ties.
Muthert, who served as an application screener before transferring to the agency’s antiterrorism unit, was interviewed in connection with the committee’s investigation into the IRS’s discrimination against conservative groups. As a screener, Muthert flagged tea-party applications and passed them along to specialists for further scrutiny.

Asked by investigators whether “all pro-Israel applicants went to the terrorism unit,” Muthert responded, “Probably . . . foreign activity, pro-Israel — if it is any type of foreign activity, it will go to the antiterrorism area.” Screeners like Muthert must consult the list of the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the Treasury Department office that enforces economic and trade sanctions, and “the terrorist list . . . because a lot of organizations will create charities to funnel the money to terrorist countries.” In further questioning, Muthert was more categorical, saying that pro-Israel groups get “not so much additional scrutiny, just more procedures.”
“More review?” an investigator asked.
“Clearly, correct,” Muthert responded. 
The IRS’s practices as described by Muthert touch on a political debate that has been raging in the United States and Israel since 2009. That’s when Washington Post columnist David Ignatius noted that opponents of Israeli settlements were fighting against tax exemption for groups that raise charitable contributions for organizations that support Israeli settlements. “Critics of Israeli settlements question why American taxpayers are supporting indirectly, through the exempt contributions, a process that the government condemns,” Ignatius wrote.
On March 27, 2009, the day after Ignatius’s article appeared, the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) filed a spate of administrative complaints with the Treasury Department and the IRS, alleging that pro-Israel groups raising funds for settlements in the West Bank were supporting “illegal and terrorist activities abroad.” Later that year, in October, the ADC said that it was waging an ongoing legal campaign against the IRS for what the ADC regarded as violations of the tax code by some pro-Israel groups.
The following year, in 2010, a New York Times report observed that “donations to the settler movement stand out because of the centrality of the settlement issue in the current [American-Israeli] talks and the fact that Washington has consistently refused to allow Israel to spend American government aid in the settlements.” The article quoted State Department officials complaining about the American dollars flowing to Israeli settlers. “It’s a problem,” a senior State Department official told the Times. The implication was that it may be wrong to grant tax-exempt status to groups devoted to causes that undermine administration policy. Relying on information in the Times article, the left-leaning advocacy group J Street called on the Treasury Department to investigate whether pro-Israel organizations collecting tax-deductible gifts for schools, synagogues, and recreation centers in the West Bank had broken the law by supporting certain Israeli settlements.
Throughout this debate, whether pro-Israel groups have been receiving additional scrutiny from the IRS has remained unclear. But in 2010, after the pro-Israel organization Z Street applied for tax-exempt status, the IRS sent it requests for further information. Z Street sued the IRS in October 2010, claiming it was targeted merely for being connected to Israel. According to court documents, an IRS official told the group that its application was delayed because it was assigned to a “special unit” to determine “whether the organization’s activities contradict the Administration’s public policies.”
Certainly, charities based in the United States have funneled money to Israeli charities that are controlled by terrorist groups in Israel. But those charities have not been of a pro-Israel bent. The most-high profile case is that of the Holy Land Foundation, the Texas-based charity whose employees were indicted in 2004 for using the group as a front to provide material support to Hamas.
The policy that the applications of pro-Israel groups be examined by the IRS’s antiterrorism unit was instituted “probably years ago,” according to Muthert in his testimony. That testimony leaves unclear whether the news coverage in 2009 and 2010 prompted the scrutiny to which groups like Z Street say they have been subjected, or whether every nonprofit group whose application indicates it may engage in foreign activity, regardless of the country, is put under the microscope.
According to Muthert, it’s the latter, and he denies that pro-Israel applications are treated differently from those of other groups that claim they plan to engage with foreign countries. “It has to do with money laundering and things, because a lot of organizations will create charities to funnel the money to terrorist countries,” he explained. “So it is not so much Israel. It is just foreign countries.”

Black Chassidim that converted get married.video

Rabbi Epstein of Lakewood that publicly embarrassed Kolko's victim's father issues an apology! Belsky silent!

A Woman’s Guide To Hasidic Street Harassment

Living in New York City means getting used to street harassment. In the past few years, my name has been Baby, Sexy, Bitch, and Hey You, Why Don’t You Smile? I’ve learned when to give the finger and when to hide. My friend Jen Dziura, a life coaching columnist, advises women that the best way to counter street harassment is to walk calmly up to the whistler or catcaller in question and politely let him know that he needs to learn how to speak to women in a respectful way.
It’s because of her that I finally said something to the Hasidic men who harass me in my neighborhood.
I live in South Williamsburg, Brooklyn. More specifically, I live on Broadway, which divides a mostly Dominican and Puerto Rican community from a Satmar Hasidic one. My Spanish is better than my Yiddish. When I want a bagel, I choose a Dominican bodega over a Satmar shop, since the men will accept money straight from my hand and the women don’t cluck at my sleeveless shirts.  In the past, when I got a catcall or leer from a Hasidic man, I rolled my eyes and kept walking. But after a series of incidents where members of the Satmar community threatened women who rode their bikes through the neighborhood and even repainted bike lanes without permission, I decided that living-and-letting-live was overrated.
The first time I said something, he was a young guy, possibly in his late teens, standing about a block away from me. He looked past my Star of David pendant straight down to my breasts. “They’re nice,” he said loudly.
“Excuse me?” I walked right up to him.
“THEY’RE NICE,” he shouted, pointing at my chest, as if the problem had merely been a failure to hear.
“Are you married?” I asked him. His face went bloodless. He scurried away like an animal who had been caught making a mess.
The next time I got bolder. When a middle-aged man whistled at me from the front door of a yeshiva, I marched up to him and said, “How many daughters do you have?” He didn’t answer, but he didn’t whistle again.
Since then, I’ve tried to find specifically Jewish ways to address street harassment. “The Torah says a virtuous woman’s price is above rubies!” I once yelled back, although he probably didn’t consider me virtuous what with my ankles sticking out all sluttily. “Would you do that to Dvora? To Sarah? To Rachel?” I asked, not realizing that these men probably would have thought Rachel was a hottie.  There is one move I still haven’t been bold enough to try yet, though: walking up to a dude, calmly touching his shoulder, and then announcing that I am menstruating.
I’m not sure if my one-woman campaign against Satmar street harassment has made any impact on their community or on the way that they think about women. Most of the men simply run away from me or act like they suddenly have an important text message to look at, but a few have told me that I should be flattered by any attention from a man. I informed one of them that my Jewish boyfriend spoke to me in a much more respectful manner and treats me like a person instead of walking cleavage, but that didn’t seem to go anywhere.
Street harassment is, sadly, a fact of life in many urban areas. There are entire websites and smartphone apps (like the excellent Hollaback NYC) devoted to helping women take down harassers. But why was it specifically Satmar street harassment that finally inspired me to stop grinning and bearing it? It was something about the fact that it was coming from inside my own community. Being able to use Judaism and Jewish language against these men and force them to examine their behaviors was something I couldn’t do with other kinds of harassers. The phone call, you see, was coming from inside the house.
Summer will be over soon, and I’ll be trading in short skirts and dresses for long pants and thick stockings. As it gets colder, fewer men will be huddled in front of buildings or strolling up and down the block. It’s possible that these men will remember me and know to avoid the uppity girl who yells at them when they’re just trying to pay her a compliment. It’s also possible that I haven’t affected them at all, and that attempts to shut them down using Torah bounced off of them like light particles. Either way, I think it’s been a little quieter on my block lately.
This piece originally appeared on HeebMagazine.com. Follow the author on Twitter at @SaveAssistants.

Monsey Shul Newsletter rules that one cannot desecrate Shabbos for someone about to committ suicide

Yes, my dear readers, newsletters have now become poskim, on life and death issues! 

Some idiotic newsletter in Monsey (I will not print the name of the newsletter just yet) issued an answer to the weekly question "Is threat of suicide sufficient Pikuach Nefesh to be Mechalel Shabbos?"
 The brilliant answer, by the big Talmud Chochom? No, you cannot !! 

The most disturbing part of the answer is that they back this asinine psak with a "Chasam Sofer" ...
Every yeshiva bocher knows that we do not pasken from any TShuvois.... but this "yukel" knows better!
I ask readers to call Hatzalah on Shabbos should something like this G-D Forbid ever happen to anybody you know and to disregard "am ratzesdeka" psakim!

R' Belsky keeps torturing Kolko's victim's father, eventhough Kolko himself admitted to molesting the victim?

This is getting very bizzare!
 R' Belsky insists that Kolko's victim was actually abused by the victim's own father!
 It gets crazier,
R' Belsky had previously  issued a psak, that anyone who has direct information about sexual abuse, go directly to authorities.

So if R' Belsky has information that the victim was actually molested by the victim's father,  why doesnt he follow his own psak and call the authorities with his information?

Ironically, Kolko himself admits that he molested the victim. Yes, it was only after two other victims came forward, but he admitted and explained in great detail to what he did to the victim.
The victim's father, was a well known Rav & Posek in Lakewood, and he did the right thing by going to Bais Din.. The Bais Din disbanded and did nothing, while Kolko continued taking sexual liberties with innocent children. The father became agitated and was afraid that Kolko will never be stopped by the Rabbis, so he asked Rav Sternbuch if he can go to authorities, and Rav Sternbuch gave him a heter to go to police and he went to the authorities.
Guess what happened?
The victim's father a well known and respected Rav was humiliated in his own shul in front of his own Kehilah and  had to escape Lakewood, and move with his entire family to the Midwest, while the punk, an English Teacher by the name of Kolko is defended by none other that Rabbi Belsky. How crazy is that?

Read the following article by the Asbury press and cry!
The choice before a deeply religious father was one he never wanted to make.
His son had been molested by a fellow Orthodox Jew, and the local rabbis to whom he reported the abuse did nothing to remove the offender from his positions as camp counselor and schoolteacher.
The father had to choose: He could follow Orthodox tradition and allow the local rabbis to continue to handle the matter, or he could go to the police.
The father went to the police. Now the molester, Yosef Kolko, is headed to state prison.
But some in the community saw the father as the offender for involving the secular authorities in an Orthodox matter. He was ostracized from his community in Lakewood, where he was a respected rabbi, Ocean County prosecutors said. He resigned from his job at Lakewood’s prestigious rabbinical college and moved his family to the Midwest.
Now, debate swirls around the wisdom of the religious taboo that protects suspected abusers from authorities and defies state law.
The ancient taboo, known as “mesirah,” forbids Jews from turning over fellow Jews to secular authorities, but some say the concept is no longer relevant in today’s society.
“The bottom line is there’s no justification for not participating in the process for reporting these crimes,” said Rabbi Daniel Eidensohn, a psychologist in Jerusalem who has written three reference books on child and domestic abuse in the Jewish community.
As New Jersey law stands now, anyone with knowledge of suspected child abuse is mandated to report it to authorities, whether it be to police or child-protective services. But failure to report the suspicions is only a disorderly persons offense, which is why some state legislators want to come down harder on those who hide molester
State Sen. Christopher “Kip” Bateman, a Republican who represents portions of Hunterdon, Mercer, Middlesex and Somerset counties, sponsored a bill that would make it a fourth-degree indictable offense for anyone with knowledge of a child being sexually abused to fail to report the abuse. As a fourth-degree offense, failing to report sexual abuse of a child would result in up to 18 months imprisonment or a fine up to $10,000, or both.
To move the bill forward in the Democrat-controlled Legislature, Bateman relinquished sponsorship to state Sen. Donald Norcross, D-Camden. The measure was approved June 6 by the Senate Law and Public Safety Committee and is heading to the full Senate for a vote.
The impetus for the bill was not the Lakewood case, but that of convicted molester Jerry Sandusky at Pennsylvania State University, as well as cover-ups by the Catholic Church of sexual abuse by priests, Bateman said.
“If you look at Penn State, if a number of individuals had done what they were supposed to do, it would not have gone on,” Bateman said of the molestation at Penn State by Sandusky. “Sometimes the cover-up is as bad as the crime.
“With the Catholic Church, unfortunately, they have a terrible track record of moving these priests (accused of sexual abuse) from one parish to another,” Bateman said. “I’m hoping this (bill) will help.”

'I felt that children were in danger'

Ben Hirsch, co-founder of Survivors for Justice, a New York-based advocacy group for survivors of sexual abuse in Orthodox communities, said he knows of similar situations in Lakewood’s Orthodox community, where the organization also does advocacy work. In one case, a man suspected of sexually abusing a boy was sent to a prestigious yeshiva in Israel, Hirsch said
What came to light during the recent Kolko trial, through the testimony of the victim’s father, was that a number of rabbis in the community knew of the allegations of molestation against Kolko and did nothing to remove him from his positions as a counselor at Yachad, a summer camp run by Yeshiva Bais Hatorah School in Lakewood, and as a teacher at Yeshiva Orchos Chaim, also in Lakewood. That is what prompted the father to go to the Prosecutor’s Office five months after he first brought the abuse to the attention of the rabbis.
Testifying at Kolko’s trial, the father explained how difficult the decision was for him.
“Going to law enforcement is not, at this time, common within the Orthodox Jewish community,” he said. “Even when it’s necessary, it’s considered unusual. ... People might believe that the alleged molester is innocent, and they would give the person going to law enforcement a very hard time.”
But the father also explained why he would rather face the repercussions: “I felt that children were in danger.”
The Asbury Park Press is withholding the father’s name to protect the identity of the victim.
Kolko, 39, of Geffen Court, Lakewood, pleaded guilty May 13 to sexually assaulting the boy, who met his abuser while attending Yachad at age 11. Kolko could face 40 years in prison, although Superior Court Judge Francis R. Hodgson said he is not inclined to give him more than 15 years.
The guilty plea came in the midst of Kolko’s trial, after two more young people came forward to authorities and claimed they, too, were victimized by Kolko.
Laura Pierro, a supervising assistant Ocean County prosecutor who handled the Kolko case, said by the time she learned of all the people who had knowledge of the boy’s molestation and failed to report it, she was hamstrung to prosecute them because the one-year statute of limitations to bring a disorderly persons charge already had lapsed.
The pending Senate bill, in addition to enhancing penalties for failing to report suspected child abuse, would extend the statute of limitations to prosecute the crime from one year to five years, Bateman said.

Reports to police are rare

Thomas F. Kelaher, the mayor of Toms River who served as Ocean County prosecutor from 2002 to 2007, said he thinks the bill is a good idea.
“If there’s only a one-year statute of limitations, you can pretty much do a good job of covering something up for a year,” Kelaher said.
In the Kolko case, a Beis Din, which is a rabbinical tribunal, sent Kolko to therapy, but the tribunal disbanded and Kolko quit his counseling sessions.
“The idea that a Beis Din has the right to bypass the police is very problematic,” Eidensohn said in a telephone interview from Jerusalem. “They have no authority to force anyone to testify or to even show up. ….If a person doesn’t agree with the Beis Din, they can ignore it.”
Lakewood police chief Robert Lawson acknowledged how rare it is for members of the township’s Orthodox Jewish communities to report crimes to the police.
“It is not the norm,” he said. “It does happen on occasion and usually it is when someone is frustrated, as is what happened in the Kolko case.”
Kelaher said he recalls few prosecutions emanating from Lakewood’s Orthodox Jewish community during his tenure as prosecutor.
“I don’t remember having any domestic violence or sexual abuse cases,” Kelaher said. “It would be strange for me to think that domestic violence doesn’t occur in communities like Lakewood’s Orthodox community.”
But there was a case involving the abduction and rape of an Orthodox woman in Lakewood that occurred in 2006, while Kelaher was prosecutor.
“Some of the people in that community said, ‘The only reason you people are involved is because we need your help in finding her,’ ” Kelaher recalled of the case.
The woman’s assailant was not Jewish.

Obsolete rule today?

A main obstacle to Orthodox Jews reporting crimes to police is the concept of mesirah, which has been the subject of sharp debate in recent years
The taboo, traced to ancient times, existed because Jews were persecuted by abusive governments throughout the centuries. Turning over a fellow Jew to non-Jewish authorities placed the entire community under scrutiny and at risk, Eidensohn explained.
“The well-being of the community was in such a delicate state that anybody who caused the king to be angry at the Jewish community was a threat to the community of Jews,” he said.
Some say it is obsolete today.
“That premise no longer exists once you enter modern society and you have a justice system that doesn’t discriminate against Jews, which is what we have in America,” said Hirsch of Survivors for Justice.
Eidensohn said the concept of mesirah never applied to violent criminals and sexual predators in the first place because society needs to be protected from them.
“The Jewish Halacha (law) is very clear,” Eidensohn said. “If someone is a threat to you, you are allowed to go to the police. If someone is a threat to other people, you are allowed to go to the police. … Five years ago, the most senior rabbis wrote a letter about the horrible consequences of sexual abuse and gave permission to go to the police.”
Eidensohn said Rabbi Moshe Sternbuch, who is deputy to the head of Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox rabbinical court, has written that child abuse should be reported to the police — something Eidensohn said he has publicized in his own books.
Michael Salamon, a psychologist on staff at North Shore Long Island Jewish Medical Center and author of Abuse in the Jewish Community, said Sternbuch is considered brilliant by many, but is not followed by everyone.
“Jewish law is based on the rabbinic tradition of debate,” Salamon explained. “The debate is not whether you can report (sexual abuse), but whether you should go to your local rabbi first for permission to report it. My position is, you need to report it, period. It’s not a rabbi’s job.”
Eidensohn said some rabbis view sexual abuse as a sin, but not something that is damaging to the victim, and they try to conceal the allegations because they are concerned about the perception of the community, he said.
“There are rabbis who think they can control a molester,” Eidensohn said. “That attitude is dying.”
But not for everyone in Lakewood, he asserted.
“They still hold by the original views,” Eidensohn said of the Orthodox leadership in Lakewood. “They are not only ignorant of the psychological consequences (of sexual abuse), they are unaware of the Jewish law published in the last five to 10 years that allows going to the police. They’re basically out of touch.”
Eidensohn followed the Kolko case closely and wrote about it on his blog, Daas Torah.
The Press made attempts to reach representatives of the Vaad, a council of Lakewood’s Orthodox Jewish leaders, and Beth Medrash Govaha, its rabbinical college, to obtain comment for this article, but was unsuccessful.
Hirsch said he believes the only way the problem will be addressed is if authorities prosecute those who cover it up.
“Law enforcement in Lakewood should be doing everything possible to encourage reporting (of sexual abuse) and making arrests for obstruction of justice,” Hirsch sa