Ultra-Orthodox Leaders: Airing Sex Abuse Desecrates God's Name

Agudath Israel of America is an umbrella organization for ultra-Orthodox Jewish groups all across the country. Their meetings probably tend to be positive, happy affairs but that wasn't the case most recently when they had to contend with protestors. The protests were from ultra-Orthodox Jews themselves, not outsiders, who were outraged over how these groups have been handling child sexual abuse cases.

As if that weren't bad enough, some ultra-Orthodox Jewish leaders have the temerity to insist that complaints about their policies and actions qualify as a "desecration" of God's name — as if they were God themselves.

How is it again that atheists are the ones who are arrogant?

A dozen protesters stood in front of the Hilton’s parking garage and waved signs that said “Agudah: Stop protecting pedophiles.” Most attendees waved off the protesters or ignored them with a look of distaste.

But Agudath board of trustees member Israel Lefkowitz rolled down his car window to chastise the protesters. “I am against sexual harassment for all the children,” Lefkowitz said. “But you don’t do this in public.”

The angry exchange outside the annual dinner May 15 for Agudath Israel, a national ultra-Orthodox umbrella group, encapsulates the escalating battle within the Orthodox community over sexual abuse of children by rabbis, yeshiva teachers and other religious authority figures. On one side, a band of loosely organized victims of sexual abuse and their supporters are crying out for community leaders to take a tougher stand against pedophilia. On the other side, many powerful leaders regard any public airing of sexual abuse allegations in the Orthodox community as hillul Hashem, a desecration of God’s name.

One of the protesters, Mark Appel, yelled at Lefkowitz in his car: “Your children are being molested, and you know that [officials from Agudath] are not doing anything about it.”

“Why are you so angry?” Lefkowitz asked.

“What is Agudah doing to my molester?” asked Joe DiAngelo, who says he was raped as a child in a Brooklyn mikveh.

In his defense, Lefkowitz replied that he booted out a principal who was molesting boys at his son’s school.

“What happened to him? Why wasn’t he arrested?” asked Levi Goldberg, a soft-spoken young man wearing a traditional black suit, hat and peyes.

“I do not know,” Lefkowitz said. He called the protest “a desecration of a Godly institution.”

Source: Forwards

People are right to be angry — when a person sexually molests a child, they deserve a lot more punishment than to simply be fired from their job! Some religious leaders have apparently been unaware of the fact that molesting and raping children is against the law, but I don't find such excuses credible no matter who uses it, and that would include ultra-Orthodox Jewish leaders if they tried.

I hope that the victims and their families move from simply being "loosely organized" to a strong, focused community group that agitates on behalf of past victims and works to prevent more victims from being created. Communities are healthier when individuals feel empowered to take action and take more direct control over the course of their lives. If they remain passive, allowing "higher authorities" to direct everything, a community becomes stagnant.