Shlomo Carlebach Did Abuse All Those Women. Now What?

This past Sunday I had the privilege of attending the world premiere of The Darkest Light, a masterful documentary by director Simon Mendes and producer Heidi Reinberg. The film tells the complete story of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, from his incandescent light to the darkness of his abuse of countless women and girls.

While I was featured in the documentary for a total runtime of less than a minute, I had been involved in the film from early on. I sat for several interviews over the years with Simon and watched him go through his own evolution as the years went on. When I first spoke to Simon he told me that he was looking to tell the story of Shlomo Carlebach completely, but wasn’t looking to take a position on his life. The purpose of interviewing me was to present a more full and complete image of Shlomo Carlebach.

As an outsider to the project it was very interesting to watch Simon’s evolution on this story. I myself went through just such an evolution when I first started writing about Carlebach. When I first sat for an interview with Simon I remember we spoke about the direction the film would take. At the time he was planning to be relatively neutral about the abuse, including it as a part of Carlebach’s life but not as the primary focus of the film. Something about Simon at the time told me that I should hang in there and that his focus would change. The interview lasted a few hours and was very thorough and all-encompassing in scope.

After that initial interview we stayed in touch. Simon started talking to Carlebach survivors and it was very clear from the way he was talking about the project that his perspective had shifted. Over time it became clear that he intended to tell the story of Shlomo Carlebach through the lens of the abuse. As he spoke to more and more people on this project it became increasingly apparent how personal this project was for him and how important it was for him to give these women whom Carlebach had abused the platform they deserved to talk about their experiences.

When I saw the first preview of the film in September of 2025 I had a lot of thoughts about it. Mostly positive, but not completely. I felt that the original cut gave too much deference to the other side, to the people who didn’t believe it or didn’t think it should be discussed after Carlebach’s death, and that it unfairly gave the last word to people who seemed very motivated to keep the status quo about Carlebach’s music even if they acknowledged the abuse. Simon and I spoke extensively about these objections and misgivings. Still, even then, it was an excellent film.

Between then and now, however, it’s clear that Simon picked a side. The Darkest Light gives appropriate time and voice to the debate over what should happen to Carlebach’s music going forward—a question that is not settled even among his survivors—but gives no quarter to those who would deny the abuse or contend that we should fully separate the art from the artist and pretend that we aren’t aware of his many abuses and the harm he caused his survivors. The only time in the film given to the deniers is in a brief interview with Yankele Shemesh, a close friend and touring partner of Carlebach’s, in which he calls Carlebach a king, and demands that anyone who says anything negative about him go to his gravesite and beg his forgiveness.

Shemesh comes off as unhinged, completely detached from reality in his denials of the abuse Carlebach committed. Indeed that’s where this film leaves that discussion. This film is the makeh b’patish, the last word in the conversation started many years ago by Sarah Blustain in Lilith. There can no longer be any question of if Shlomo Carlebach sexually assaulted all those women and girls, only what we do in response.

In that sense the film is an absolute masterpiece. It begins by drawing the audience into the world of Shlomo Carlebach. It makes you fall in love with him, his music, his message, and his philosophy. It transports you emotionally and temporally to the intimate and personal relationship created by Carlebach between him and his audience. You feel as if you’re there, as if you’re living in his world, a world of love, and light, and music. And then it brings you crashing back down to reality by slapping you in the face with a detailed and heartbreaking account of his sexual assault of Sheva Kuvet Hart, who had come to him expecting to be part of a learning group he’d organized. There was no group. Carlebach had lied to her to sexually assault her.

The shift to that account in the film is sudden and jarring, and it perfectly captures not only what his survivor must have experienced in that moment, but what everyone who has ever grappled with the darkness of Shlomo Carlebach experienced the first time they learned of his crimes. As the film continues it moves back and forth between the lofty fantasy Carlebach created for his followers and the harsh reality of what he was actually doing to his survivors.

Much of the film is filtered through the lens of Neshama Carlebach as she comes to terms with who her father really was and the tremendous harm he caused. Her own evolution on this issue is apparent, not only through the film itself but through her own writing over the years. In 2018, at the height of the #MeToo reckoning with her father’s legacy, she wrote her now-famous article, My Sisters, I Hear You, in which she acknowledges the tremendous pain in her father’s legacy. The article never explicitly acknowledged the allegations in any specificity, but for the first time it was an acknowledgement by “the other side” that the allegations of abuse weren’t some fringe distraction, but something real that deserved to be grappled with.

The #MeToo movement and the reckoning it caused with Carlebach’s legacy had seriously impacted Neshama as well. Her career came to a standstill as the backlash against her father’s music and legacy grew, and for a number of years she had difficulty booking shows. Many people no longer wanted to pay to hear Shlomo Carlebach’s music and felt that her use of it was in poor taste. Her own history with his music is complicated, and she discusses that in the film. When Shlomo Carlebach died he left his family with nothing, and it took years of work and litigation for Neshama to enforce the copyrights Shlomo himself had never enforced.

Throughout the film she exhibits a clear and strong ambivalence about her father’s music and legacy. She loves him but can no longer deny the harm he caused. In the film she completes a story she began in My Sisters, I Hear You. She describes being sexually assaulted as a girl by a friend of her father’s, and then describes her father’s flippant denial of her abuse when she disclosed it to him. It’s a heartbreaking moment in the film, and highlights how Shlomo Carlebach’s complete indifference toward women’s body autonomy and personhood extended even to his own daughter.

In an article published the day of the premiere, Neshama goes even further than she does in the film and clearly and unequivocally acknowledges the abuse. She expresses her hope that beyond a simple conversation about whether or not to still sing her father’s music the film will be a springboard for a communal conversation about the systems that enable abuse. While Neshama was originally expected to attend the premiere and sit on a panel with two of Carlebach’s survivors following the screening, she explains in the article that she decided not to attend out of deference to the survivors who deserve the primary focus. She nonetheless expressed her support for the film and her intention to participate in future events and screenings.

It’s a powerful piece that I strongly recommend reading.

It stands in stark contrast to her sister Dari, who explicitly states in the film that she doesn’t believe the allegations, and that no one—not even his victims—could know the truth of what really happened. In a statement to Arutz Sheva, Dari said, “I want to say first of all that I was interviewed four years ago, before the direction of this film was made known to me. I would never be a part of a film like this, and if I could be removed, I would a thousand times. Unfortunately, I am bound by a release I signed. There is somehow a popular opinion that because my sister has clearly stated her opinion, that is the opinion of the entire family. That is hers and hers alone.” In the film Neshama discussed emails and messages she’d received from friends and family castigating her for having written My Sisters, I Hear You. The family clearly do not all agree on this issue.

The end of the film focuses on the question of Carlebach’s music. While it doesn’t take an explicit position on that question it does present strong opinions against the use of his music alongside opinions support its continued use. In fact, of the three survivors interviewed in the film, the two who address the question don’t agree on that point. Donna Zerner says that she still listens to his music and enjoys it, while S.J. Schwaidelson says that if she had her druthers she’d never hear it again.

Over the years I’ve spoken to many of Carlebach’s victims, many of them disagree on that question. Enough of them have told me over the years that they no longer go to shul because they can’t guarantee they won’t hear his music. If we believe as a community that everyone should have a right to go to shul without having to accept being triggered by their abuser’s music as a precondition for walking in the door, then it’s incumbent on us to rid our shuls of his music.

That said, Neshama’s point is well taken. This is not just about whether or not we continue singing her father’s music in shul. It’s about a communal reckoning with Carlebach’s abuse, as well as all the abuse regularly enabled and disregarded in our communities. I would argue, however, that the two issues require the same approach. Eliminating Carlebach’s music from shul is no simple task. It is ubiquitous across the Jewish world in a way that is unmatched by the music of any other composer. Even attempting to rid our shuls of his music would require exactly the kind of communal reckoning Neshama calls for. It would require communal teaching, sermons from the pulpit, and real discussions at the Shabbos table about not only this one specific abuser but how we can build safer communities as a whole, and how we can become supportive and safe communities for all survivors. In doing the work on the former, I believe we can foster the latter.

The Darkest Light is an absolute must-see. It definitively moves the conversation beyond the question of whether or not the abuse happened. It did. Now the question is how we respond.

If you want to request a screening in your community, reach out to Simon.

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Nechemya Weberman’s 103 Year Sentence Vacated, Resentenced to 18 Years

The hearing began with the judge stating that he would be granting the motion to vacate Weberman’s original sentence. Weberman had originally been sentenced to 103 years, but that sentence had been reduced by law to 50 years because of caps on incarceration. Weberman was then given an opportunity to address the court and his victim, who was present in court with her husband, her lawyer, friends, and advocates.  

Weberman read from a prepared statement saying that he was not there to revisit the past. He said that he stood ready to take full, unconditional responsibility for the harm he caused. He said that he had misused the position of authority that was given to him and had desecrated God’s name. Turning to his victim he told her that she deserved a protector, and instead he had violated her. He told her that she had done nothing to deserved what had happened to her, that she had been an innocent child.

He then said that his time served – 13 years – had paid his debt to her, and that he stood before the court as a changed man. He pleaded to his victim, saying that he wasa truly, and deeply sorry.

The ADA, Joe Alexis, then asked Weberman to be more specific about what he was apologizing for. He asked Weberman if he accepts that his victim was 12 years old, and Weberman said he didn’t remember exactly, but that she was a child. The ADA then asked Weberman what specifically he had done to his victim. Weberman said it was sexual abuse. When asked to be more specific, Weberman bristled, saying he didn’t want to get graphic. His family was sitting in the courtroom, including two of his children.

He said that he’d been in jail for 13 years and couldn’t remember the specifics well enough to graphically say what it was, but it was sexual abuse, and that he didn’t want to think about it.  The ADA asked him if he didn’t remember anything about it, and he said that he remembered what he’d said – that it was sexual abuse, but that he wouldn’t be using graphic language and it wouldn’t be true if he said it was this or that. The ADA asked him what he did remember. Weberman said “let’s call it sexual abuse.” The ADA pushed him, saying that Weberman kept saying that, but what did it specifically mean.

Weberman again, getting impatient, repeated that it was sexual abuse, inappropriate touching, inappropriate things, sexual abuse. The ADA then asked him if he had put his hands on his child victim’s breasts. Weberman said that he wouldn’t remember exactly how and where the abuse was. The ADA asked him if he was saying he didn’t remember if he did that. Weberman said that he would paint a picture of it, but not exactly say specifics, but that he knew what he did was wrong. The ADA cut him off and said he was glad Weberman was saying it was wrong, but pushed him again asking if Weberman had put his hands on his victims breasts while she was a child.

Weberman, who participated in the hearing remotely and had one lawyer with him and one in court, turned to the lawyer next to him instead of answering. His court lawyer objected saying this wasn’t an allocution, he was already convicted. The judge seemed upset at the games being plated and forcefully said that while Weberman didn’t have to say anything he can do what he wants, but that the judge had to decide where justice lay and that Weberman was making his job harder.

After a long pause, Weberman answered yes to the original question. The ADA then asked if Weberman had only said that because of what the judge said. Weberman said that it happened, he put his hands on her breasts. The ADA then asked if Weberman had put his hands on his victim’s buttocks. Weberman said he didn’t remember. The ADA, expressing credulity at that, moved on, asking Weberman if he had placed his hands on her vagina. Weberman said he didn’t really remember.

The judge, looking annoyed, said that he found it hard to believe that Weberman didn’t remember, but that they didn’t have to ask any more questions. The ADA asked to continue to make a record, and then asked if Weberman remembered putting his mouth on his victim’s breasts. Weberman said that he did. The ADA asked if Weberman had put her mouth on his penis. Weberman recoiled and denied doing that. The ADA remarked for the record that Weberman had said he never did that. Someone in the crowd audibly said “Baruch Hashem” and the court officer snapped at him to be quiet.

After a long pause Weberman admitted to putting his victim’s mouth on his penis. The ADA then asked where this had taken place, and after a short back and forth Weberman said that it had happened in his office. The ADA asked if Weberman’s victim had been his patient, and Weberman said that she wasn’t a patient because he wasn’t a rabbi, he was a rabbi and she had come to talk to him. The ADA followed up clarifying if she had come for counseling, and after another back and forth Weberman said that she had been coming for rabbinic counseling.

The ADA then asked if in addition to the crimes they’d already discussed he had also committed an additional crime in her home when he was laying in her bed with her. Weberman looked confused and disdainful, and took a long pause before asking if the question was if he had done anything in her home, and then answered yes. The ADA then pressed on, asking if he had rubbed his penis against her vagina while laying in bed. Weberman said no, and turned to his lawyer to talk briefly before asking for the question to be repeated. After a long pause he said yes.

After that tortured exchange, Weberman’s victim spoke.

She started out describing how Weberman wouldn’t flinch when he burned her. His need for control and power over a child, she said, turned him into a monster who had violated her body, her emotions, her soul, and her wellbeing as a child. That violation, she said, didn’t stop, but followed her into adulthood. The cruel psychological and sexual abuse was so severe, she said, that 10 years of therapy hadn’t erased the wounds. She said she was grateful to God for creating the life that she now finds worth living, but that she’d be lying if she said that in that life worth living she didn’t experience turmoil in such important areas of her life.

She said that she accepted that what she experienced may never go away, that the scars were too deep from the abuse she experienced while she was developing. The impact, she said, was woven into her developing soul. She then said that it was our responsibility to protect the public interest, to protect vulnerable children. She invited the judge to see the bigger picture, that this wasn’t just a case about one violated child, but about an older man who was well aware of what he was doing, and strategically placed himself in positions of power, including on the advisory board of her elementary school, taking an elitist place in the community as a member of the Malachim, and placing himself in a position of rabbinic authority in the community.

Additionally, she continued, placing himself as a counselor working without a license to work with children, teens, and vulnerable adults and couples, all arranged by himself to get access to not one but dozens of struggling children, teens, and adults. His highly regarded position, she continued, gave him authority of them, and there was no question he used his position to sadistically violate and control his victims for years.

Both throughout and after the trial, she said, she received many messages from women, girls, and men, all of whom were survivors of Weberman. Many, she said, came to the trial in quiet support, wishing to testify but barred by the statute of limitations. Other, she said, were still within the statute of limitations but were too scared to come forward because they had seen what the community had done to her, harassing her father, ostracizing her family, closing their businesses, throwing relatives out of yeshiva. They were scared they wouldn’t survive, she said.

Weberman, she said, matched the description of a God complex, behaving with a deep sense of control over others, using threats, coercing, and messing with the minds of children while sexually abusing them. His uncontained need for control, she said, led him to burn her while laughing, mocking her when she started to bleed as he penetrated her, utterly without care for the human being he was shattering.

This case, she said, was not the kind of case where a judge would be showing mercy to an innocent man suffering for a crime he’d long paid for. Weberman, she said, earned every moment of the 103 years, and even then, there was no doubt in her mind, she said, that there’s a specific place in hell for him and his supporters. Society, adults, this court’s obligation, she said, was to keep others, especially young, at-risk kids safe, and anyone turning a blind eye, or helping those dangerous to the public held deep responsibility.

The first sentencing, she said, was the first time she saw that perhaps the world was not corrupt, that maybe there was some justice and safety. Despite knowing, she said, that not everyone in the system was corrupt, it took only one judge to make a decision against the corruption and demonstrate an unwavering commitment to protecting children. She said she was well aware that God was the ultimate judge and that he has messengers. She said she was confident the honorable judge would consider this and choose to protect children above all.

In closing she shared one comment from researcher Carl Hanson who wrote an 2024 article about the likelihood of recidivism by the 5% highest risk sex offenders. They had the following features, she said: first, sexual deviance, and pedophilia. Second, antisocial traits, including engaging in a pattern of disregard for the wellbeing of victims without remorse. Third, manipulation, grooming, and controlling people to serve their power or interests through a deliberate process to build trust and gain control of people for the purpose of abusing them. Fourth, cross-age and cross-gender victimization. Weberman, she said, had all 4 risk factors, and was clearly in the highest risk category for offenders.

Many offenders, she said, have a low risk of reoffending, but the top 5% had over a 40% chance, and the top 1% had over 67% chance of reoffending. Weberman, she said, would continue to molest if released, especially due to the fact that he had and has community support, will be welcomed back, and will be trusted by the community. He may resume mentoring, she said. It would be a tragedy, she said, if someone else is back in front of the judge in 5 years describing similar abuse. Addressing the judge she said, you can prevent that.

Weberman’s video had cut out at some point toward the end of the victim’s statement, and it took a while to get him back. When he got back on, the lawyer with him said that the video had cut out in the middle of the statement. The judge asked if he wanted the rest of it read out from the court reporter. Weberman asked if it was very long and said he didn’t really care. The judge read out the portion of the statement that Weberman had missed.

Addressing the victim, the ADA said that she was remarkable in every regard, that she had survived unspeakable crimes while a child, and that her abuser was a fully grown man who had abused his position of power and authority to prey on her. He said that there were no words to describe the courage she showed during every moment of these crimes. Turning back to the judge the ADA said that they stood by the conviction, and said that candidly he had come to court with prepared remarks, but that he was going to deviate from them.

Weberman had read a prepared statement, he said, but when asked specific questions about what he’d done his memory failed, and he voiced a series of denials only to then eventually admit it. 103 years, the ADA said, was disproportionate, which was why they didn’t oppose the 440 motion. In preparing for the hearing, he said, they had reviewed sentencing for defendants convicted of similar crimes and the average time was between 15-25 years. The ADA said that he had been authorized to recommend 15 years but that he wouldn’t be doing that. Instead, he said, he would be leaving it to the court to determine an appropriate sentence between 15 and 25 years.

He followed by saying that the defense answers to questions saying he couldn’t remember was confusing to him because no one could forget something like that, and he found it troubling that Weberman had said he couldn’t remember. Especially, he continued, since Weberman’s victim could never forget them.

It should be noted that Weberman, in his brief, had been seeking a resentencing to 13 years, essentially the time he’d already served, and was hoping to be let out of jail today. The DA’s office authorizing the ADA to ask for 15 years was not much different. A sentence of 15 years, 13 and change of which had already been served, would have been immediately eligible for parole, so while they would put on a good show of pretending that they weren’t just rolling over and caving to Weberman, in fact they would be. Weberman could have been out within weeks if the sentence had been 15 years. Weberman took that away from himself by acting with contempt and sneering at the questions being asked by the DA about what he’d done to his victim.

Finally, Weberman’s court lawyer, Donna Aldea, argued against the recommendation made by the ADA. Her arguments largely centered around the sentence being disproportionate to other sentences for similar crimes committed in recent years. She referenced letters by a number of judges submitted along with the motion saying that Weberman’s sentence had been disproportionate, and brought up flaws in the arguments raised by the cases cited by the victim’s lawyer. She also fiercely contested the narrative that had been built around the additional victims who had come forward during the original trial saying that those were hearsay, and wondering out loud where they’d been for the last 10 years if there was any substance to their claims.

Weberman’s lawyer even went as far to cast doubt on the victim’s trial testimony saying that she had been unable to remember specific details about incidents while testifying and on cross examination. She then referenced the character letters submitted on behalf of Weberman, She concluded asking the judge to sentence Weberman to time served, a sentence proportional to other sentences in similar cases.

Weberman then spoke again briefly to reiterate that he took full responsibility for repeatedly sexually abusing his victim. He said he was really sorry that he didn’t answer right away, and that he’d been shocked by the questions.

Finally, the judge rendered his sentence. He started by saying that they were there to achieve justice, but that justice wouldn’t be done that day because there was no undoing the harm that had been caused. He said that he’d read in an article that there is perhaps no moment in the work of a judge more harrowing and morally demanding than sentencing, the moment at which he or she decrees the suffering of another person. Then again, he said, we can’t just look at justice as ideal because it is a weighty reality. The offender’s actions, he said, can’t be the final word. Where does justice lie?

Listening to everyone’s submissions, he said, it’s obvious to the court that the original sentence of 103, even as it was reduced to 50 years, is unduly harsh and severe even given the horrible physical and emotional betrayal. It doesn’t reflect a proportionate balance of justice, he said. Therefore, he continued, he sentenced Weberman to 18 years, plus 10 years of supervision, which he said remained a substantial and meaningful penalty that recognizes the seriousness of the offense, promotes and achieves respect for law, and is proportional.   

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Mendy Kiwak Sex Abuse Trial Begins – Pretrial Motions & Jury Selection

The trial of Menachem Mendy Kiwak started on Monday morning with pretrial motions and jury selection. Three issues came up before jury selection about how the trial would proceed.

The first was a question of whether the defense would be allowed to question the victim about whatever prior relationship she may have had with Kiwak prior to the alleged sexual assault on September 15t, 2022. It should be noted that at the time it was a crime for a therapist to have a sexual relationship of any kind with a client, however Kiwak fell into a loophole in the statute that didn’t include his particular license as an LMHC. That law has since been changed, in large part as a result of this case which exposed the loophole.

Nonetheless, since at the time of the alleged offense Kiwak’s license excluded him from that law, part of his defense seems to be that if anything happened it was part of a longer running consensual relationship with the victim, although his lawyers still firmly maintain in their arguments that no sexual relationship ever existed. Regardless of the law and its loopholes, it is expressly forbidden under the code of ethics that governs Kiwak’s license for a counselor to have a sexual relationship with a client, and Kiwak could have his license suspended or revoked if he loses this trial. This may be why he is bothering with the trial rather than taking a plea.

For its part, the prosecution wanted to elicit testimony about the escalating nature of the relationship while she was a client, including the escalation of alleged impropriety against the victim culminating in the alleged assault on 9/15/22. They wanted to elicit testimony about the general power imbalance between the two of them, the control the victim felt Kiwak had over her, and the reasons why she continued going back to him, as well as context about the community, how it operates, and Kiwak’s place within it.

The judge ruled that she would allow testimony about any relationship that existed prior to the alleged assault but limited to the fact of its existence, that it increased, and the narrative of the assault, nothing else.

Then there was a discussion about whether to allow the victim’s therapist who she went to after Kiwak to testify as an outcry witness to the initial disclosure of abuse by Kiwak. Generally secondhand information is considered hearsay and not allowed to be presented as evidence at trial. Witnesses are generally supposed to have experienced or seen what they’re testifying about firsthand or have some kind of physical evidence that they’re presenting testimony about. There is a long list of exceptions, though. One of them is outcry testimony. An outcry witness is generally the first person a survivor of sexual abuse discloses to. According to the Guide to New York Evidence, “The “premise” for this evidence, as stated by the Court, is that “prompt complaint was ‘natural’ conduct on the part of an ‘outraged [complainant],’ and failure to complain therefore cast doubt on the complainant’s veracity; outcry evidence was considered necessary to rebut the adverse inference a jury would inevitably draw if not presented with proof of a timely complaint.”


The defense argued against some of the specifics of the outcry to the therapist and more broadly that the outcry wasn’t made promptly enough since it was almost a year after the alleged incident. This is not uncommon in sexual assault cases where delayed disclosure is a well-recognized feature of the case. The judge ruled that the outcry would be allowed but only about the alleged sexual assault, not about any prior relationship or contact before 9/15/22. She later ruled additionally that the same outcry witness would be allowed to testify about the victim’s outcry to her husband which identified Kiwak as the alleged assailant which was made in the presence of the therapist.


Next was a motion by the defense to allow cross-examination of the victim to include details about her mental health diagnosis. According to the victim she had originally sought help from Kiwak for postpartum related depression and anxiety. Kiwak’s lawyers argued that her later diagnosis should be fair game to impeach her credibility by arguing that what she believed happened was perhaps a delusion as a result of that diagnosis. The judge did not seem to appreciate that argument and denied that motion, limiting them to cross examining in good faith about whatever relationship may have existed prior to the assault and anything that comes up during direct examination.


The defense also requested to be able to cross-examine the victim about prior suicide attempts which they argued was necessary to give context to the nature of the treatment Kiwak was giving her, and context to text records they claim show her thanking him repeatedly for helping her. Their defense strategy seems to be impeaching her credibility based on her mental health, claiming that she got nothing but help from Kiwak, claiming that she made up a lie about Kiwak to redirect her husband’s attention and anger toward Kiwak instead of the issues they may have been having in their marriage, that whatever relationship may have existed prior to the alleged assault (which they don’t concede happened) was consensual if it occurred (which they don’t agree happened at all).


In general the judge’s approach to questions about what would or wouldn’t be allowed under cross examination seemed to be that anything obviously improper wouldn’t be allowed but everything else would have to wait until the witness testified to see what the allowable scope for cross-examination would be.


Next, jury selection started. Jury selection, for those who haven’t experienced it, is long, detailed, mostly boring, but also a fierce battleground between the two sides to try and pick jurors whose biases align with those of each side. The stated ideal is to pick jurors who are fair, open-minded, willing to set aside bias to judge impartially, and who represent a fair cross-section of the community. In reality what each side wants is actually jurors who are more likely to sympathize with them. Men accused of sexual assault are going to favor more right-leaning men, and prosecutors prefer women who are a little more left leaning in their sympathies. The goal for each side is to find a way to bounce the jurors they don’t want off without being accused of bias, and hope that when the final jury shakes out they have something to work with.


It began with some general questions from the judge about the law, whether they’d feel comfortable following it, whether they could set aside their biases, whether they believed in the presumption of innocence, and whether they understood that the defendant has a right not to testify, and similar questions in the same vein. This was followed by more detailed questioning by the judge about each juror’s background and life circumstances. Then each side got to question the jurors about whatever they wanted to ask.


The primary concerns for the prosecutor seemed to be whether jurors would be able to return a conviction on testimony alone without any physical evidence of the alleged crime (things like DNA, video surveillance, the kind of things you tend to see more on SVU), whether delayed disclosure from a survivor of sexual assault made any of the jurors suspicious of the allegations, how they generally assess witness credibility, how they differentiate between a witness being nervous while testifying and a witness being evasive and dishonest, and how they expect a victim of sexual assault to appear while testifying.


The primary concerns for the defense seemed to be whether they would hold it against Kiwak if he didn’t testify in his own defense, whether they are more inclined to believe one gender over the other in a sexual abuse case, whether they could be unbiased when presented with sexual abuse allegations, how they feel about the phrase “believe women” (that question was asked deliberately combatively to see how they’d react to being accused of not believing women in a post #MeToo era), and about whether the jurors would subconsciously shift the burden of proof to the defense by expecting them to prove why the alleged victim might be lying.


Six jurors were empaneled by the end of the day, and the two alternates were selected on Tuesday morning.


One other issue that arose on Monday that carried over until Tuesday was a last-minute amendment to the complaint requested by the prosecutors. Kiwak practiced in multiple offices in Boro Park and they requested that the judge allow them to amend which office the alleged incident happened in. The prosecutors argued that this was a small issue akin to a typo that needed changing. The defense objected saying that they had structured their defense around what was written in the complaint and that they would be prejudiced by this last-minute change.


The judge allowed it because it was a small administrative error that didn’t change the substance of the allegation.


On Tuesday, after the alternate jurors were selected, the defense raised an issue with the amended address on the complaint. They claimed that according to the case law they cited the court didn’t have the authority to change the complaint because changing the address is a substantive change. Since the criminal complaint is sworn by the alleged victim it goes to her credibility if she said it occurred at one address and it actually happened at another. The law doesn’t allow such a change to be made, they argued, without filing another charging instrument like a superseding complaint, or prosecutor’s information.

The prosecutors seemed caught off guard by this renewed argument over what they no doubt thought was a settled issue, and tried arguing that the case law cited by the defense cited to a case that said that as long as the location being amended was within the general jurisdiction of the court, in this case Kings county, it shouldn’t be an issue to amend the address since all other details, including the county in which the alleged incident occurred, were correct.


The defense pointed out that the case law referred to by the prosecution wasn’t applicable anymore because of a law that was changed which reformed the criminal procedure laws after that case had been decided. The prosecutors requested a recess so they could do a little more research on the issue.
After the break the defense asked for the case to be dismissed on the basis that the amendment was improper, that the alleged victim had sworn the complaint with an incorrect address and could have been changed during the entire pretrial period and wasn’t, and now the prosecution had essentially admitted that there’s an element of the complaint that they can’t prove because it’s wrong. Additionally, the defense argued that the jury was prejudiced at this point as well.


During jury selection, one of the questions the prospective jurors were asked was whether they had any familiarity with the address where the alleged incident happened, and were told not to go to the location to see it. After the judge granted the prosecution’s request to change the address she told the prospective jurors what the new address was to refresh the instruction she’d given.


The defense argued that since the judge had already taken a position by telling the potential jurors the defense was prejudiced by the change, and so were the jurors.


The prosecutor responded saying that the address wasn’t really relevant to any element of the alleged crime. The exact location isn’t important here. All that’s required in the complaint is the jurisdiction – in this case Kings county – and that was correct on the complaint. The defendant, they argued, had multiple offices, and which one the complaint listed was not relevant to whether or not it happened.
The defense responded pointing out that in their response they hadn’t argued that the amendment was allowed, just that the case shouldn’t be dismissed for having an incorrect address on the complaint. The prosecution didn’t dispute that point and conceded that they didn’t need to amend the complaint. Regarding the dismissal the judge ruled that an incorrect address on a complaint wasn’t enough of a reason to dismiss since the underlying information is still facially sufficient to proceed with the case.

With those matters taken care of the trial was ready to begin. Next post on the case will cover opening arguments and the alleged victim’s testimony.

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Yeshiva University Doesn’t Deserve to Exist

“The second an institution matters more than the people it serves, it no longer deserves to exist.”

This was one of the first and most powerful lessons I learned when I began volunteering, and it’s a value that has struck with me and informed every step of my advocacy career. It is ZA’AKAH’s guiding principle. An institution’s job is to serve people. The institution only deserves to exist – only fulfills its own values – as long as it does that. The second it begins serving its own interests above those of the people it claims to serve, even if it believes it’s doing so in service of serving its constituents, it has violated its values and lost its right to exist.

This holds especially true if an institution’s excuse for violating its own purpose and hurting the people it serves is so that it can continue serving those it doesn’t intend to hurt. Take an institution like Yeshiva University, for example. Throughout the second half of the twentieth century its leadership was aware of a number of profligate sexual abusers like George Finkelstein, Macy Gordon, and Richard Andron, abusers who had dozens of victims, and took no action to protect students from them, bring them to justice, or help their victims heal. On the contrary, they engaged in systematic coverup so effective that all three remained respected members of the community even after finally leaving Yeshiva University.

The coverup was so effective that the rabbis involved, chief among them Norman Lamm, are still referred to with their honorifics. Lamm in particular is considered one of thee Gedolei Hador of the Modern Orthodox community despite the dozens of destroyed lives he’s responsible for enabling.

This is not new information. The Modern Orthodox community is well aware of the damage Yeshiva University and its leadership is responsible for, and yet Yeshiva University prospers. According to their most recent tax filings, they are in possession of over $1B in assets following a number of remarkably successful fundraising years. Their president, Ari Berman, was invited to deliver a benediction at the inauguration of Donald Trump, a shanda in its own right. Things have never looked better for Yeshiva University. And all the while, the dozens of children, now men, who were abused by staff at Yeshiva University, and whose abuse was covered up by its leadership, await even the barest attempt at teshuva.

When I talk to people about this they don’t express shock. They sigh and ask what choice they have. Yeshiva University is the flagship institution of Modern Orthodoxy, they say. It’s the only place we can guarantee our children won’t face antisemitism, they say. It’s where our whole family has gone to college and rabbinical school for generations, they say. What exactly is the alternative, they ask, as they send their children and money to step over the bodies of Finkelstein’s, Andron’s, and Gordon’s victims on their way to Yeshiva University.

Rabbi Norman Lamm Ztz”l was Gadol whom we have a lot to learn from, and who among us hasn’t made mistakes, they say, as the institution he led for decades while covering up the dozens and dozens of children molested at MTA threatens witnesses into not giving depositions, hire armies of increasingly expensive lawyers to engage in frivolous and costly motion practice, attempt to expose the names of the victims they’ve already hurt by sexually abusing, and engage in increasingly predatory and invasive discovery.

All the while they expect the community to continue sending their children and money to this place because where else are their children going to be educated in accordance with Torah values? Modern Orthodoxy begins and ends with Yeshiva University, and who really cares what crimes they’ve committed, how many lives they’ve destroyed, how many victims died fighting for justice – it’s made itself too big to fail and the reward for that is that they get to abuse children with impunity and force the rest of us to continue supporting this. The second Modern Orthodoxy becomes more important than the people it serves…

What’s maddening about this is that it isn’t some mystery what happened to Mordechai Twersky, Jay Goldberg, Barry Singer, David Bressler, Zachary Belil, Mark Lowell, Jeff Rockman, John Doe 1, John Doe 2, John Doe 3, John Doe 4, John Doe 5, John Doe 6, John Doe 7, John Doe 8, John Doe 9, John Doe 10, John Doe 11, John Doe 12, John Doe 13, John Doe 14, John Doe 15, John Doe 16, John Doe 17, John Doe 17, John Doe 18, John Doe 19 (deceased), John Doe 20, John Doe 21, John Doe 22, John Doe 23, John Doe 24, John Doe 25, John Doe 26, John Doe 27, John Doe 28, John Doe 29, John Doe 30, John Doe 31, John Doe 32, John Doe 33, John Doe 34, John Doe 34, John Doe 35, John Doe 36, John Doe 37, John Doe 38, John Doe 39, John Doe 40, John Doe 41, John Doe 42, John Doe 43, John Doe 44, John Doe 45, and the many others.

It isn’t a mystery. We know. They know. They know the full extent of it, too, thanks to a report they commissioned through Sullivan & Cromwell which they are currently fighting to prevent from being produced to the victims in discovery. They allowed Finkelstein, Andron, Gordon and the others to abuse dozens of children that we know of, covered it up, and felt no guilt for the lives they destroyed.

It’s not even like they learned anything from the experience and did better in the future. When a student at Stern was raped by a member of the basketball team they did what they have always done, pretended to care, did nothing, and fundraised a fortune off the basketball team.

To add insult to injury, RIETS board chair, Lance Hirt, is also the board chair at Hebrew Academy of Long Beach, which itself has been engaged for years in litigation related to an elementary school rebbi, Yossi Ungar, accused of sexually abusing a student. HALB, pretending to follow best practices in response to the lawsuit, hired their own defense attorney to carry out a sham investigation into the allegations. Naturally their own defense attorney was unable to find any indication of abuse. Following a public letter written to Camp Kaylie, who also employed Ungar, about another allegation made by a second victim, HALB announced they were conducting a second investigation, this time hiring a reputable outside firm.

While they claimed through that firm that they would commit to releasing a summary of that report, it’s been 3 years with no sign of any report, summarized or in full, being released from HALB. Perhaps Lance Hirt was elevated within Yeshiva University leadership precisely for his expertise in institutional malfeasance in handling sexual abuse cases.

Mordechai Twersky recently wrote an op-ed in which he detailed the disgusting, invasive, and predatory tactics being used by Yeshiva University against the victims suing them. They are spending millions on defending themselves against allegations we all know are true. By the time Yeshiva University is finished paying for their defense, through trial, through appeals, and by the time they’re finished paying judgments, many of their victims will have died never having received an apology, and never having seen them held accountable. They will have died while watching two generations of students come in as freshmen and graduate with masters degrees and rabbinical ordinations, all while never receiving so much as a “sorry” from the people responsible for hurting them.

The second an institution becomes more important than the people it serves, it no longer deserves to exist.  

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Maryland Court of Appeals Upholds Krawatsky Verdict

Following a jury verdict finding Krawatsky liable in the sexual abuse of two boys at Camp Shoresh, Krawatsky filed an appeal to try and overturn the results. While it’s uncommon for jury verdicts to be overturned on appeal, Krawatsky was no doubt encouraged to appeal anyway by the same people who had already sunk $2.5 Million into defending him against the accusations in the first place and suing the parents of the victims for defamation. In losing the appeal, not only did Krawatsky cost them a fortune to try, but also put him on the hook for the appellees’ costs.

Krawatsky’s central arguments addressed by the court were the following:

The judged erred in trying the question of whether Krawatsky had sexually abused his victims before trying his defamation claim

The judge erred in dismissing the Jewish Week and Hannah Dreyfus from the case shortly before trial in summary judgment after finding that Krawatsky was a limited purpose public figure where the sexual abuse allegations were concerned

The judge was biased against Krawatsky

The judge improperly excluded expert testimony from Dr. Barbara Ziv about the children’s credibility

The judge gave an improper jury instruction

The judge shouldn’t have allowed punitive damages to be assessed after the jury had awarded compensatory damages of $1

The court case was initiated by Krawatsky when he filed a defamation case against the parents, the Jewish Week, Hannah Dreyfus, and Chaim Levin. The parents for discussing the allegations that he contended were false, Levin for publishing an article on his blog accusing Krawatsky of sexually abusing children, and Dreyfus and the Jewish Week for their series of articles on the topic. The parents counter-sued Krawatsky for sexually abusing their children.

Before jury selection in the trial the judge informed the parties that he would be trying the case in the following order:

The parent’s claims against Krawatsky to determine as a matter of fact whether the abuse happened > If the jury found Krawatsky liable the jury would move on to the damages phases to determine how much Krawatsky owed them > After a determination was made about whether the central allegations were true the jury would address whether Krawatsky was defamed > If Krawatsky was defamed, what damages are owed to him

What actually ended up happening was that Krawatsky was found liable for the sexual abuse of two of the three boys, ordered to pay $1 for each in compensatory damages, and $8,000 each in punitive damages.

Krawatsky argued on appeal that the judge’s decision to order the trial as he did disadvantages Krawatsky because his lawyers had prepared to argue as a plaintiff not a defendant, that there wasn’t enough notice given before the change was sprung on them, and also generally waaaaaaah no faaaaaaaair we called it first! The appellate court found that the judge had not erred in ordering the trial as he had because obviously if you have two competing claims – one alleging that a thing happened and the other arguing that it didn’t and claiming in public that it did was defamatory – the first issue to settle is whether or not the thing actually happened. Truth is generally an absolute defense to defamation in the United States, and it was therefore crucial to this cluster**** of a case to first determine whether or not Krawatsky had sexually abused those boys before determining whether everyone else had defamed him by accusing him of molesting them.

At trial Krawatsky brought Dr. Barbara Ziv as an expert witness hoping to use her to call the kids liars. Ziv had been paid about $250,000 for a very extensive report on the case and its various parties. Ahead of trial the judge issued a ruling severely limiting what she could discuss on the stand. In other words, he limited her to testifying generally about the issue of sexual abuse, and behaviors that are commonly recognized as reactions to being sexually abused. She was barred from testifying about whether or not the victims were sexually abused. At trial she was allowed to testify about the issue generally, what grooming typically looks like, the typical effects on victims, and common behaviors of pedophiles in general. She was not allowed to testify to specifics about the accusations against Krawatsky or the credibility of the victims.

Krawatsky’s lawyers believed that was unfair likely because so much money had been spent and they were looking forward to using her to call the victims liars and claim that Krawatsky didn’t fit the profile. In fact, Krawatsky’s attorneys repeatedly tried to elicit testimony from her specifically about the victims’ credibility and objection after objection was sustained to prevent that. At one point it got so bad that the judge excused the jury and directly addressed Dr. Ziv and Krawatsky’s lawyers telling them to knock it off.

The appellate court correctly affirmed that the judge had been correct in limiting Ziv’s testimony as it had. The question of whether Krawatsky abused those children, and therefore the question of whether or not the victims’ testimony was credible, was the sole domain of the jury. The role of a jury in a trial is to be the finders of fact in any given case. If there’s a question of whether or not something happened, evidence is presented to the jury and then they’re asked to decide, based on the evidence before them, if the thing happened or not. It’s inappropriate for an expert witness to testify to the credibility of another witness and by extension try to be the arbiter of whether or not something did happen. They are allowed to educate the jury to ensure that they understand the issue and are equipped to apply that understanding to the question of whether or not something happened. Although it’s understandable that the defense was annoyed. A quarter-million dollars is a lot of money to waste.

In a rather arcane argument in the minutiae of the specifics of the civil tort for assault, Krawatsky’s lawyers argued that when the judge gave the jury instructions on how to evaluate one of the victim’s causes of actions for assault he incorrectly instructed them with the instructions for criminal assault rather than the accepted instruction for civil assault. The argument hinged on, first, the differences in Maryland law between civil and criminal assault and whether it was required for the victim of the assault to be in fear of the impending assault for a defendant to be found liable for civil assault, and, second, whether the judge had failed to give instruction to the jury that included that element.

The appellate court broke down the issue into two parts: Does civil assault actually require that the victim be in fear of the impending assault, and did the judge give the right instruction. To the first point they analyzed the different potential elements of civil assault. According to Maryland law, civil assault can either be threatening to commit a battery against someone and causing them to fear the threatened battery, or actually attempting to batter someone in which case the victim is only required to be placed “in reasonable apprehension” of the impending battery. In this case the victim was claiming the latter type of assault – that Krawatsky had actually attempted to batter that victim. The question then was whether the victim was placed “in reasonable apprehension,” and whether or not the judge had given the jury that instruction before asking them to determine if Krawatsky had in fact assaulted that victim.

The appellate court concluded that the jury instruction was actually lacking that element and then turned to the question of whether that should matter – in other words, if that was enough to have prejudiced the jury and made them return an incorrect verdict. That question hinged on whether or not, had the jury received the correct instruction, they would have returned a different verdict for that victim. In reviewing testimony and evidence presented at trial the appellate court determined that enough evidence had been presented to demonstrate that the victim had clearly been fearful of what Krawatsky was doing.

Had the court given the correct jury instruction, the appellate court concluded, the only way the jury could have returned a different verdict on that victim with the correct jury instruction was somehow if they believed every single other element of the testimony but for some odd reason chose not to believe the testimony regarding that victim’s fear and apprehension. Since it was clear that they did believe the witnesses about every other element it was unreasonable to assume that they would have disbelieved that specific element if given a jury instruction asking them about the victim’s apprehension.

Krawatsky raised the issue of punitive damages being awarded after the jury awarded only nominal $1 damages for each victim. The appellate court first noted that as a technical matter the issue wasn’t properly preserved for appeal at the time. In other words, when the judge instructed the jury on finding punitive damages Krawatsky’s lawyers failed to object on the grounds that they had only awarded nominal damages, and was therefore barred from raising the issue on appeal. In a footnote they addressed the actual argument saying that there was a difference between different kinds of nominal damages a jury could award in a trial. The first is nominal damages awarded where a party is found liable for a clearly compensable injury but the jury, for whatever reason, is unable to figure out the amount of damages to award. Then there’s nominal “technical invasion” damages which is a way for a jury to recognize that a law was broken even though no actual damage was caused. Given that this case was clearly the former, it was appropriate for the jury to award punitive damages after awarding nominal compensatory damages.

When the trial seemed not to be going their way, Krawatsky’s lawyers put on an impressive show for everyone assembled in the courtroom of accusing the judge of bias, citing eye-rolling and other faces made by the judge in response to things said by Krawatsky’s lawyers. It should be noted that Krawatsky’s lawyers had blatantly and repeatedly tried to get around rulings by the judge, especially during Ziv’s testimony, overall acted like bullies toward opposing parties and witnesses, and generally acted belligerently over the course of the trial. Despite this, the judge had handed down rulings even-handedly, at times ruling for one side and at times for the other. This culminated in a 10-minute or so tirade by Krawatsky’s lawyers during which they berated the judge and accused him of bias while he sat calmly and listened.

The appellate court in considering this issue first noted that they had failed to preserve timely objections for appeal when they allege the biased rulings happened. According to Maryland law if they were going to make an argument of bias on appeal they would have had to place the objection on the record when the biased rulings happened. Because they didn’t the appellate court wouldn’t consider those issues. The one issue of alleged bias they did address was the judge making faces. In addressing that the court pointed to the fact that the face-making and eye-rolling was disputed by everyone in the courtroom, with Krawatsky’s lawyers claiming that it was happening, and the judge and plaintiff’s lawyers all disagreeing. Absent any other proof, and in examining the actual trial transcript and record of rulings for each side, the court could find no indication of bias.

Finally, the issue of the summary judgment dismissal of the Jewish Week and Hannah Dreyfus from the case before trial was addressed. The defamation defendants had claimed that for the purpose of this controversy Krawatsky was a public figure because by the time the Jewish Week had started publishing articles about the alleged abuse the public discussion about it had been going on for years, and Krawatsky had inserted himself into the public controversy by hiring a PR firm to suppress Google Results about the allegations against him.

Public figures are treated differently in defamation cases. Defamation against private citizens requires that the person making the statements was negligent in determining whether or not they were true. Defamation against a public figure requires that the person making the statements have shown “actual malice” in making them. In other words, that they either knew the statements weren’t true and said them anyway, or showed a reckless disregard for whether or not they were true. In order to be considered a public figure, or a limited purpose public figure, the court must determine whether there was a public controversy about the subject of the statements, and whether the plaintiff participated in the public controversy to a sufficient extent to make them a public figure in the context of that controversy.

In Krawatsky’s case the controversy had been public for a number of years before the Jewish Week published anything about it, and Krawatsky inserted himself into that controversy by hiring a PR firm to suppress Google results negative to his reputation. Because Krawatsky was found to be a public figure for the purpose of this public controversy, and because the court determined that it couldn’t be argued that Dreyfus and the Jewish Week had acted with actual malice, they were dismissed from the defamation case in summary judgment.

In addressing whether the court had correctly dismissed the Jewish Week and Hannah Dreyfus, the appellate court noted that given the outcome of the trial – that Krawatsky was found to have abused two of the boys – the issue was rendered moot, but noted in a footnote that even if it were not moot the court had ruled correctly in dismissing the Jewish Week and Hannah Dreyfus.

Whether Krawatsky will blow any more of his wife’s brother-in-law’s money on appealing to the Supreme Court of Maryland is anyone’s guess, but after this ruling his chances are looking slim.

Link to full decision: https://www.courts.state.md.us/sites/default/files/unreported-opinions/0091s24.pdf

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The Parents of One of Aaron Weinreb’s Victims Speak Out

In 2021, following his pleading guilty to charges related to the sexual abuse of two 14-15 year old boys he met on Grindr, Aaron Weinreb, a Five Towns based former OB/GYN, solicited letters of many in the Far Rockaway and Five Towns communities on his behalf for sentencing. Over 100 letters were written for him, many by prominent rabbonim, including Rabbi Yaakov Bender and Rabbi Moshe Weinberger, and fellow doctors, pleading for leniency, citing his years of good deeds as a doctor and philanthropist, and extolling his efforts at doing teshuva for his crimes. He was sentenced to 54 months in prison, and served a little over three years.

After ZA’AKAH published the letters written by the rabbonim and doctors in 2024, Rabbi Moshe Weinberger apologized for writing his letter in a video posted by Amudim. Following his apology, ZA’AKAH was contacted by the parents of one of Weinreb’s victims, expressing frustration at the lack of accountability for those who wrote letters for and supported Weinreb through his case and sentencing. They have decided to speak out in the hope that by offering their experience of this ordeal they can help the community understand what it’s like when the victims and their families see the man who abused their child getting so much public support.

Here is their letter:

Dear Rabbonim, community leaders, and fellow parents:

When one of our own was publicly accused of sexual crimes against our children, our rabbis, organizations, and professionals rallied around him, writing letters on his behalf which talked about his good deeds and his standing in our community. Because he sexually preyed on children, however, his victims are faceless and nameless for their own protection and, in many cases, are ashamed to come forward. As a people, we have always valued tzniut, so we do not name them. Our rabbinim, and our community at large, must realize that his victims, most of whom remain nameless for their own tzniut, are no less important and no less a part of our community.

Our son grew up among you, in yeshivas, surrounded by rabbonim, teachers, leaders, and professionals we trusted. At 15, he was preyed upon by one of them—a respected doctor and member of our community. We ourselves were unaware of what had happened to our son until the FBI and police showed up at our door.

This depraved predator, who raped our son just before Rosh Hashana, pleaded guilty as part of a plea bargain in exchange for a sentence within a certain range. We were told that we could write pre-sentencing letters to the judge, and in those letters we poured out our hearts. The judge postponed the sentencing, and we believed that our letters were being seriously considered. We were shocked and dismayed when he was sentenced to even less than the minimum term he had bargained for, with the judge specifically referring to the letters when handing down a very lenient sentence.

We recently learned that our letters had been overwhelmed by dozens of rabbonim and other members of our community who had written letters on his behalf. We feel betrayed by the institutions and individuals who prioritized money and social status over the truth. This predator received an even shorter sentence than he had bargained for, supported by letters from leaders we once respected and revered. They saw only the facade that this person presented, not the side of him that he showed our son in the worst possible way. In contrast, because his victims remain anonymous for the sake of their own protection and tzniut, the rabbonim could not see them as victims. We, being nogeia b’davar, were our son’s only advocates. Our letters, the only ones which were written with real firsthand knowledge of the damage which  had truly been done to the neshamot of his victims, were outnumbered. The rabbonim and others who wrote those letters did not know our son and his beautiful neshama, or how it was forever lessened and pushed away from yiddishkeit by his actions.  

We were particularly disgusted to see letters written by rabbonim whom we once respected, whom we now want nothing to do with, and whose institutions we will not support and no longer want to set foot in. Recently Rabbi Weinberger sent a beautiful and heartfelt apology over instagram. It warmed our hearts, and gave us a glimmer of hope that others would follow suit. We are still waiting. 

Our son is still healing, but the pain of our community’s betrayal remains. While his abuser has been welcomed in shuls and yeshivas, our son now dreads stepping into such places.  

Part of teshuva is trying to mitigate the harm that one has caused. We believe that our son and the other victim who came forward are just the tip of the iceberg, and there are others out there who have yet to come forward. To those rabbonim who have charata, who feel they were misled and used to persuade the judge to give this man a more lenient sentence that he deserved, you can encourage his other victims in your kehilot to come forward so that he can be held to account for those crimes as well. To others hurt by this man or others like him, we urge you to speak out. True community demands accountability, courage, and the protection of our most vulnerable, even if we do not know their names.

A disappointed family

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Stop Writing Letters For Pedophiles

People often assume that I’m the founder of ZA’AKAH because since assuming its directorship in December of 2016 I’ve become such a public face for it, but the truth is that when ZA’AKAH first started I didn’t support its aims. ZA’AKAH was started by 5 Footsteps members who were use that name to organize a protest the Internet Asifah in 2012, an event planned by a wide array of Charedi community leaders for the purpose of declaring the internet banned. The event was planned for May in Citi Field, where the Mets play baseball, and was going to include many speeches by Gedoilim, many of whom would be in attendance both from the Chassidish and Litvish worlds.

The ZA’AKAH organizers felt that if the community was going to spend so many millions of dollars on something as asinine as banning the internet, they could and should devote at least some of that to helping survivors of sexual abuse access justice and resources to help them heal. The Orthodox community is notorious for denying that the community is suffering an epidemic of sexual abuse, and equally notorious for retaliating against community members who dare to report fellow community members for sexual abuse. To be clear, sexual abuse is not a uniquely Orthodox problem, but the manner in which the community goes about silencing survivors and punishing those who speak out is unparalleled in the broader Jewish community.

 It is still the stated policy of many in the Charedi community to require permission from a rabbi before reporting sexual abuse to secular authorities, and even when such permission is granted survivors still face the threat of backlash for reporting. Survivors regularly lose access to jobs, schools, marriage prospects, and community standing for speaking out publicly, and risk other severe consequences. Resources for survivors are almost nonexistent, and most survivors find that their abusers have ready access to full-throated public support from rabbis and community leaders than they do.

Against this backdrop, the ZA’AKAH organizers sought to point out the hypocrisy of the community in declaring all-out war on the internet while doing nothing about the issue of sexual violence. For my part I was skeptical about the comparison. I was still very much part of the community, Charedi in my outlook and observance, and I didn’t see why a community couldn’t hold two values simultaneously: That the internet was a pernicious spiritual threat, and that sexual violence was a scourge that must be dealt with properly. Contrasting the two made no sense to me. I commended the organizers for organizing, but urged them to do something more productive with their time. Being that I was a 20 year old pisher who knew nothing about the real world at the time, they humored me and carried on.

A month or so before the Asifa I walked out of my office in Boro Park and saw a sign on a lamppost advertising a fundraiser for Nechemya Weberman, a former unlicensed therapist in Satmar Williamsburg who had been arrested (and was since convicted) for repeatedly raping a 12 year old client of his. Incensed at this brazen and disgusting public display of support for a pedophile I called one of the ZA’AKAH founders and suggested that if they wanted to do something actually productive they should organize a protest outside the fundraiser.

Despite that call taking place the day before the fundraiser, they managed to organize a very successful protest outside which called national attention to what was happening in the case. They then continued with the Asifa protest as planned. That protest was much smaller than the Weberman protest, but it got good press coverage nonetheless, and continued ZA’AKAH’s momentum. Not believing in the logic behind the Asifa protest I didn’t attend. I now regret that decision.

As I got older and more involved in advocacy on behalf of survivors of sexual violence in the Jewish community, eventually assuming the directorship of ZA’AKAH, I began to better understand the thought behind the Asifa protest. As the years went by, I saw how some of the worst people in the community were publicly supported without question. I saw rapist after rapist, pedophile after pedophile, provided with the best lawyers money could buy while their survivors drank, drugged, binged, purged, starved, hurt, and killed themselves to make the pain go away. I spent countless hours on the phone with survivors who were losing their homes, jobs, families, communities, marriages, children, sanity, health, and futures while the people who caused their suffering were honored at dinners, defended by rabbis, and supported by fellow community members.

My heart broke over and over again as I told survivor after survivor that I couldn’t help pay for their therapy, even though I didn’t know if they’d be alive long enough for treatment to be expensive, that I couldn’t provide them with access to justice because the rabbis they grew up revering were fighting and paying to make sure that never happened. I had no answer when survivors asked me why no resources were available for them when heaven and earth moved whenever a crook or abuser in their community asked it to.

And then I started reading letters written by rabbis on behalf of convicted pedophiles, rapists, and abusers, rabbis I knew in many cases had had a personal hand in either covering up the abuse in that case or in other cases. That’s when I understood what animated the original ZA’AKAH organizers to protest the Internet Asifa: Is it possible for a community to hold two priorities at once? Sure. But a community whose priorities are so focused on minute stupidities would never be able to focus on the real problems. A community spending millions to ban the internet would never take the issue of sexual violence seriously because they were spending so much time focusing on such a stupid problem.

If the internet was to them such a big problem that it was worth spending millions, and millions of dollars, and who knows how many man-hours gathering together every Charedi community within a 100-mile radius to hear speeches about how evil it was, then they would never care about sexual abuse. They were demonstrating their priorities clearly and emphatically, telling anyone who would listen to them, that they didn’t see anything else as worthy of attention.

That’s what writing a letter on behalf of a pedophile, rapist, or sexual abuser says to the community: That you just don’t care about the issue. Is it possible to care about the wellbeing of people convicted of crimes and facing incarceration as well as the wellbeing of those who suffer sexual violence? In theory. In practice, however, when no expense is spared to help the abusers, and no resources are available to help the victims, the message to survivors is very clear: You are an inconvenience at best, a blemish at worst, and we would much prefer if you left, died, or stayed silent forever.

It’s so rare for rabbis to publicly support survivors that if such instances exist, they can be counted on one hand. It’s so common for rabbis to publicly support abusers that it’s impossible to recall all the examples.

Consistently, abusers can count on the best representation in court, whether civil or criminal, including appeals, support for their families in the rare instances they incur judgments or are sentenced to prison, rabbis telling their communities not to talk about it because it’s lashon hara to discuss abuse cases, and the presumption of innocence or teshuva, even post-conviction, even if there’s no evidence of either. Survivors, on the other hand, can expect nothing but vitriol or callous indifference.

So sure, when we have a community where rabbis truly understand the experiences of survivors, speak out publicly against abusers, write public letters of support on behalf of survivors being mistreated by their communities, publicly raise funds for the mental health, legal, and material needs of survivors, create safe communities oriented around best-practices based abuse prevention and response policies designed to keep children in the community safe and protected, when survivors can assume that they’ll be believed, protected, supported, and healed, when abusers legitimately fear punishment for their crimes – then we can talk about whether or not it’s ok for rabbis to write letters for pedophiles, rapists, and abusers. Something tells me that once we’ve accomplished all that, whichever rabbis are left will think better of it if asked.  

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Zev Steen Sentenced to 23 Years in Fort Dix, Registry, & Lifetime Supervised Release Following Prison

The courtroom was filled with people there to witness the sentencing, mostly family and friends of Zev Steen, with about 5 or 6 people from the community present to observe but not support. Steen himself seemed unperturbed by the whole thing not displaying much emotion, and having a light conversation with is lawyers.

The hearing started with a discussion about the redacted sentencing letters included in the defense’s sentencing memo. The defense had initially petitioned the court to file their sentencing memo under seal, but had been denied. They had been ordered to minimally redact their document redacting only what was necessary to protect the identities of minors and other similarly sensitive information. Instead they had redacted every bit of identifying information about the authors of the letters and the nature of their relationships to Steen.

The morning of the hearing ZA’AKAH submitted a follow-up letter to the judge asking her to order the defense to refile their memo with fewer redactions. At the start of the hearing the judge showed the letter to the defense and asked them for their position. Steen’s lawyer argued, as he had in the letter, that case law showed that there was precedent for protecting the identities of letter writers and that ZA’AKAH’s intentions were to expose the letter writers rather than just shed light on the factors affecting the judge’s sentencing decisions.

The judge remarked that she had seen opposing case law and that it seemed ZA’AKAH was mainly interested in the identities of public figures who had written letters of support and that public figures generally have less of a presumption of privacy. The defense agreed that public figures enjoy less of a presumption of privacy, and the judge said she would find some middle ground that would likely involve less redaction for the letters by public figures. The same, she said, would be true of the video.

Following this discussion the judge inquired of the prosecution whether they had received any requests for restitution from any of the victims of either Steen’s direct abuse and filming or from any of the victims in the materials he’d possessed and distributed. The prosecution said that they’d sent the materials to NCMEC and received no return requests for restitution from any of the victims in the materials.

Then came the sentencing guidelines calculations. In federal court there are specific guidelines that govern what sentencing should be. These guidelines aren’t necessarily binding on judges but they are used as a baseline for determining a sentencing range. It’s a point-based system with all sorts of factors that can add or remove points. There were three groups of conduct being considered in determining Steen’s level for sentencing: Two instances of sexual exploitation of his victim, and the distribution of Child Sexual Abuse Materials (CSAM). Given the crimes he had been accused of and pled guilty to, plus the fact that he exhibited a pattern of behavior, he was considered a dangerous repeat offender. Some points were reduced for having accepted responsibility for what he did and pleading guilty.

At the end of the calculation he was still at the maximum for his offense and the range of sentencing available was up to life imprisonment. In his plea deal, however, he had pled guilty in exchange for a maximum sentence of 28 years. His lawyers requested 15 years in their sentencing memo which is the mandatory minimum for Steen’s crimes.

After the sentencing guidelines calculation is usually when a victim would make an impact statement but no victim was present and interested in making a statement.

The prosecution then made its case for a 28 year sentence. This was not just a case of CSAM, it was a case of direct sexual abuse of the victim. Steen violated the trust of this child repeatedly despite understanding his responsibility to the victim and knowing the damage he was going to cause. Steen’s case was not that unusual in the context of sexual abuse cases in that he had no prior criminal history. The sexual abuse aspect of his crimes is not all that made him dangerous. The possession and distribution of CSAM also makes him a danger to the community because it makes him a danger to girls under the age of 12, which was his preference in CSAM.

It’s undisputed that he is a pedophile attracted to girls under 12 years old and that he has impulse control issues in that area. Despite not abusing any children (that we know of) between the period of his initial disclosure to his wife and his arrest in 2022, the abuse he committed had not just been one instance. It was planned and repeated over years before his wife caught him with CSAM on his computer and confronted him, and only then did he disclose to her. That makes him dangerous.

And he did in fact reoffend by possessing and distributing CSAM even while being watched by his wife who knew he had a problem, trafficking in videos of child rape depicting incest.

The judge interjected to ask if the prosecutor knew how long Steen had been engaged in possession and distribution of CSAM and the prosecutor responded that the only evidence he had began in July of 22 and ended when he was arrested in October of 2022.

The judge then tried to ascertain where Steen worked before he got the job at Bnos Yisroel in 2016 but that wasn’t available on his employment record. It seemed her intention was to determine if he had simply maintained his job there following his disclosure in 2013 or if he had gotten a new job there after that disclosure. The prosecutor and Steen’s lawyer confirmed that he started his job at the school in 2016, three years after his wife caught him and he disclosed his abuse to her.

The prosecutor then continued. Steen was and is a danger. 28 years was needed as a general deterrence to the public to demonstrate that there is a severe penalty for this kind of crime. It promotes respect for the law to have sentences that match the severity of the crime especially since he produced his own CSAM depicting his repeated sexual abuse of a child. 15 – the mandatory minimum – is not enough. The court has the opportunity to send a message that getting away with sexually abusing a child and filming it will be rewarded with a lower sentence.

Some crimes are so severe that they must be punished even if the perpetrator has demonstrated good acts in other areas not relevant to the abuse. Much of the mitigating circumstances were in fact addressed in the plea deal. He already got two years off the 30 years the prosecution could have demanded, and in fact he’s eligible for double what the prosecution was asking for, and other similar offenders have in fact gotten that sentence. He’s already gotten enough of a break on his sentencing without getting only 15 years.

Next the defense presented their case for only a 15 year sentence – the mandatory minimum.

The defense is not asking for a slap on the wrist, and the prosecution’s dismissal of this request for 15 years implies that the mandatory minimum sentence specifically set by congress isn’t good enough. Anything more than 15 years in prison for Steen is tantamount to a life sentence given his age (around 49). He doesn’t have a lot of time outside of his sentence and 15 years is already a tremendous sentence in a difficult prison. Steen’s lawyer pointed out that after 15 years he himself will be dead to underscore how long it was.

The prosecution is treating years like M&Ms but this is actually a long time for him and prison is going to be difficult. This case actually is unique. After his wife found CSAM on his computer, Steen confessed everything to her. Much of what the prosecution knows is only because Steen confessed everything he did to her and asked for help. He was honest and how that honesty is being used against him. He was trying to get better.

(It should be noted that while Steen did disclose what he did to his wife, it was only after he was caught by her with CSAM on his computer, and their way of dealing with it was going to Rabbi Neuberger who covered it up and sent them to an unlicensed therapist for a year for treatment. This could not have worked out better for him. There were essentially no consequences for him following that initial disclosure.)

He is not a danger to people on the street. His problems from 13 years ago didn’t happen again. He is not a danger or menace in person, maybe on a computer when it’s impersonal, engaging with CSAM. Not the kind of danger the prosecution is referring to. There was no new abuse at the school or other victims since 2013. (It should be noted that no evidence of any other victims doesn’t mean they don’t exist. The defense is asserting that there are no victims but no one can know that except Steen.)

Steen isn’t the type of risk people say he is. Sure, he struggles with “keystroke offenses” but nothing since, and nothing was found other than new materials one time during a period of struggling (that took place over at least several months and involved hundreds of pieces of CSAM). The SD card that was found with the CSAM he’d produced as bad as they are were less violent than in normal cases. It’s also usually traded and distributed, and in this case there’s no evidence that he shared the videos he took. It was deleted and never distributed.

When the government found the CSAM Steen produced it was thousands of fragments of a deleted video that had been deleted a long time ago. (Although one has to wonder how in all that time there was so much of the video left on the deleted sections of the SD card almost 10 years after it was produced. Generally an SD card that’s routinely used would have fully overwritten all of the deleted data by that time.)

In the 13 years since his initial disclosure there’s no indication of additional abuse and he has consistently been doing good deeds and helping people in his community. He successfully raised a family with 7 kids, prioritized making sure they got an excellent education, and the only reason he sought a job at the school was not to get access to new victims but to get a discount on tuition he couldn’t otherwise afford to ensure his kids got the best education. In some cases when this kind of crime is exposed hell opens up in the family, but in this case he has a beautiful family that are all very well adjusted. Steen raised them well and his children reflect well on him.

The prosecution in their sentencing memo cited many studies about the effects of sexual abuse but in none of the studies they cited did any of them say that 15 years is less effective a deterrent than 16, or 18, or 20, or 28 years in prison. 15 years in hell is plenty of deterrence. After 15 years he will come back to probation and lifelong supervision where he will be monitored, be given treatment, be subject to regular polygraph testing, and spot checks. They will do a very good job controlling him. The prosecution can’t argue that that’s not sufficient.

While he was in state custody after his arrest he did homework on the phone with his kids every night, and even called his kids’ principal out of concern for his children. He helped fellow inmates giving them books on religion and positive things. He could have sat and done nothing but instead he spent his time helping people. His jail chaplain, Rabbi Sholom Reindorp, even wrote a compelling letter describing how Steen helped his fellow inmates. It speaks to his character that he’s concerned with helping others during the worst time of his life. We want everyone to act the way Steen is acting during their incarceration.

The judge then asked if anyone was present to speak on Steen’s behalf. His wife’s brother spoke about how Steen had taken him in when he was a kid going through a difficult time and supported and helped him. He described dealing with dyslexia as a kid and the time and patience Steen dedicated to helping him prepare for his bar mitzvah. He described Steen as exhibiting intuitive kindness. He described the lengths Steen went to in securing him a scholarship to a Boy Scout camp which he enjoyed greatly. He also described Steen providing him a safe place when his mother was dying, and later helped him buy a ring when he got married.

Next Steen’s brother spoke describing their upbringing and how Steen was always a support for him as they moved from place to place, helping him integrate easily into their new environment. He also discussed a business the two of them started which was struggling and how Steen had wished him the best when he said he’d be leaving for a better opportunity. He then described how Steen had spent time helping someone with terminal cancer finish a book he had been writing ensuring that it got published before he died.

Steen’s mother then spoke asking the judge to take her son’s good deeds into account and saying that she and her husband ask themselves every day how this happened when they tried to raise good children and give them a good life. She said that she goes over every day what mistakes they may have made and feel such guilt over what happened.

Steen’s son also spoke talking about how loving and caring his father was and describing how Steen helped him when he was struggling. He also talked about his own struggles following the arrest and his uncertainty over the future. He described going with Steen to a local grocery to help bring the food nearing expiry to a local food pantry.

Steen’s wife then spoke describing how her husband disclosed to her (after being caught) and asked for help getting treatment. In addressing her decision to stay with him she said that she decided to walk through hell and face it together with him for the health and benefit of the whole family. She said that contrary to the way the prosecution characterized Bergman they actually had top people helping them with extensive treatment in all areas of life which Steen himself spearheaded. She said that in a sense her husband was a better parent than she was because he didn’t raise the kids like a herd but spent time cultivating their specific individual interests and hobbies.

She said that she understood the anger and vitriol of certain groups and a wish for punishment, but that Judaism believes in Teshuva – which is repentance, but deeper – that demands that you look inwards at yourself, reflect, confess, and resolve for the future, which is what Steen did. In prison, she said, he brought a group of men together to elevate themselves and inspired teshuva in his fellow inmates.

Steen himself was asked if he had anything to say, and he used his time to address his family saying that he was so sorry for what he did, that he loved them, and that where he was he would still be with them and be in touch to help with their challenges.

The judge then laid out the factors she considered in rendering her sentence:

  • He had an easy upbringing with no trauma
  • Married 23 years with 7 kids
  • Steady employment
  • No criminal history
  • Letters from friends and family attesting to him being a good member of the community
  • The extremely serious nature of the offenses over so many years
  • The fact that he possessed and distributed hundreds of pieces of CSAM (in light of his previous abuse) causing serious damage and revictimization to the kids depicted on those materials and perpetuated the demand for CSAM
  • The seriousness of his crimes and the need to promote respect for the law
  • General deterrence and specific deterrence for Steen
  • Need to protect the public given the nature of the conduct
  • The sentencing guidelines

The judge then remarked that it was a very sad case with a traumatic effect on the victim, his family, and his community. She pointed out that there wasn’t just one victim but many including the victims of the CSAM he possessed and distributed. Regarding his employment at the school the judge remarked that had his disclosure been handled properly (in other words had anyone who heard it reported it) he would never have been in a position to have gotten that job at the school. Despite there being no evidence of further abuse after that disclosure, he wasn’t cured after one year of therapy.

The judge also remarked that bad conduct doesn’t mean a person is a bad person and Steen clearly has done a lot of good deeds and has a lot of support. Remarking on the collateral damage to his family the judge said that she doesn’t take it lightly but its not relevant given the statutory guidelines.

Given all of these factors, his presentence rehabilitation, good deeds in jail and with his family, and the fact that he accepted responsibility, she sentenced him to 23 years in prison at Fort Dix with lifetime supervised release afterward. She said she hoped he would use this time to help his family and get treatment.  

There were a number of fines he was technically eligible for that he wasn’t sentenced to pay because he was considered indigent, which is noteworthy considering how expensive his lawyers were. They confirmed during the hearing that Steen himself wasn’t paying them. It’s anybody’s guess who was.

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Baltimore Rabbinical Leadership & CHANA Clinical Coordinator, Covered For Steen for 10 Years: Prosecutor

In December of 2023 Zev Steen, a former teacher at Bnos Yisroel in Baltimore, and former head of TAG Baltimore, an internet filtering nonprofit, pled guilty to one count of sexual exploitation for repeatedly raping a child, filming it, and distributing it along with numerous other images and videos of children being sexually abused to a network of pedophiles online. The abuse and filming of his victim occurred in his own house. Steen was found with some of the footage on his person on an SD card at the time of his arrest.

After his initial arrest Steen was granted release on bail, but shortly afterwards was rearrested on more serious charges when the repeated sexual abuse and filming of his victim was discovered in the course of the investigation. After he was remanded to jail for the duration of his case Steen filed a habeas corpus motion to petition the court for bail. In support of his petition Rabbi Shraga Neuberger, a bigwig at Ner Israel and head of an important leading family in Baltimore, wrote a letter attesting to Steen’s character, referring to him as “honest and dependable.”

Some community members, outraged at Neuberger’s public support of Steen, began a petition meant for the court to ask the judge to deny Steen pretrial release. The petition received 364 signatures. It’s unclear whether that factored into the judge’s decision, but Steen’s petition was denied.

In early September of 2024, a former student of Ner Israel reached out to Neuberger to ask him about the letter he’d written in support of Steen. In emails leaked from the conversation Neuberger expresses sympathy for Steen, implying that there’s more to the story, mitigating circumstances unknown to the former student, and the possibility that Steen is not as guilty as he was being made to seem (in other words, what he’d pleaded guilty to).

Ahead of Steen’s sentencing on September 30th his attorneys filed a motion asking the court to allow them to file his sentencing memorandum under seal to protect sensitive information about the case and victim from being made public. The motion mentioned letters of support that had been written on behalf of Steen by his family and members of the community who no doubt wanted their letters to be filed under seal to prevent them from facing scrutiny for their public support of a pedophile. Thankfully the judge denied the motion and ordered that redactions be restricted to “redacting only identities of minors and other similarly sensitive information while otherwise preserving public access to court filings.”

On September 25th the prosecution filed its sentencing memo. Contained within it are additional horrific details about the abuse, as well as sickening details about what Baltimore community leadership knew about Steen’s abuse, when they knew it, and the measures they took to cover it up. Baltimore has outdone itself with this case. When people say that Baltimore is a uniquely dangerous place for children, this case is a perfect example of why.

The sentencing memo begins by detailing what Steen did. Zev Steen sexually abused the victim in this case from when she was 2 years old until she was 8 years old. He videoed his sexual abuse of her at least twice, once in a video depicting the two of them naked in bed where Steen had her sit on top of him so their genitals were touching until he ejaculated. He continued to abuse her repeatedly over the next 6 years.

In another video Steen is shown in bed with the victim, both naked, with her sitting on his torso, her anus and genitals shown, and Steen’s penis in between her legs in contact with her genitals. In some of the images he is shown holding his penis on her buttocks which are covered in his semen. The victim was 5 years old in this video.

Steen was also in possession of numerous images and videos of child sexual abuse materials which he downloaded and uploaded on a peer-to-peer network. The play history on his VLC player showed that he had been watching videos of a 10 year old being sexually abused, a little girl performing oral sex on a man while wearing a collar, a young girl sitting on a toilet being ejaculated on by an adult who makes her lick it off herself, and a video of a young girl being urinated on in a bathtub, among many other disturbing images and videos.

While Steen’s sentencing memo has not yet been filed publicly, the prosecution’s memo includes descriptions of some of the materials which were filed when the motion to seal was filed. Along with his motion he submitted multiple letters of support from family and members of the community along with a video compilation of some of his family and two rabbis in support of lenient sentencing.

One of the big questions surrounding any case like this is why a serial pedophile’s wife would stay with him after she knows that he’s sexually abusing children. This sentencing memo offers some insight in this case as to why Steen’s wife stays with him. The memo states that in 2013 Steen and his wife came to Rabbi Shragi Neuberger and disclosed Steen’s conduct. Neuberger then sent the two of them to a “counselor who had experience in this area.” Neuberger then describes on the video how he supported Mrs. Steen’s decision to remain in the marriage.

How much of that is actually an informed decision and how much of that was pressure from Neuberger is anyone’s guess, but it’s not unreasonable to assume that being told by a very prominent and influential rav in the community that you should stay with your pedophile husband may have had something to do with it. One might also assume from this that Neuberger sent them to a licensed therapist who specializes in the area of sexual abuse of children to perform some kind of official assessment.

As an aside, such an assessment still wouldn’t be grounds to advise a woman to stay married to a pedophile especially when she has children with him, but at least one could understand the rationale. No, the “therapist” Neuberger sent them to was Yehuda Bergman, an unlicensed “drama therapist.” He has no professional specialty in sexual abuse or trauma counseling and does not treat minors.

In May of 2023 Bergman testified before a grand jury about the “therapy” he provided the Steens. He said that he had treated them for a year after Neuberger sent them to him. He also said that Steen had admitted to him that he’d sexually abused his victim over a period of years and stated that the last instance of abuse was “a little bit earlier.” Despite having a duty to report the abuse, Bergman and Neuberger decided not to report the abuse because the consequences would be too difficult for the victim. Right, because being sexually abused and filmed for 5 years wasn’t difficult.

Following this disclosure the victim was sent to a therapist for a year who said that there were no sexual indications at all during her treatment of the victim. The therapist, Laura Greer, an LCSW who serves as clinical coordinator for CHANA, a support organization for victims of abuse, said that she was informed generally that there had been some kind of sexual abuse but was given no further information. She also said that the nature and extent of the abuse was never described to her. She said that she never received a direct disclosure, and never asked. She seems to have adopted a don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy regarding the repeated sexual abuse of a child. No report was ever made by her.

Notably in the emails referenced earlier between the former NIRC student and Neuberger, Neuberger makes the claim, by way of trying to minimize what Steen did, that CPS had investigated Steen for sexual abuse in 2013 and that no disclosure had been made to them by his victim. He failed to mention that Steen had disclosed repeatedly sexually abusing her.

Rabbi Mordechai Shuchatowitz, Av Beis Din of the Baltimore Beis din, implied in his video on behalf of Steen that Steen has an “addiction” because of something unhappy in his life. He then opines that Steen did not produce, collect, and distribute CSAM because he wanted to see inappropriate material, but because something was gnawing at or bothering him.

This addiction trope is one that pops up again, and again, and again in sexual abuse cases. Rabbis love characterizing pedophilia and sexual abuse as a “sex addiction” rather than what it is: The criminal urge to rape children. An addiction is something that can be treated or cured. Pedophilia cannot be cured or effectively treated. It’s also an insult to sex addicts to be lumped in the same group as pedophiles. Sex addiction is a real but specific phenomenon where someone is compulsively engaging in consensual sex that is harmful to their lives or relationships. Sexual abuse is another thing entirely.

The frum community tends to use the term sex addiction to describe any kind of sexual activity it doesn’t approve of. This includes watching porn, even if not excessive, masturbation, homosexual intercourse, sex out of wedlock, pedophilia, and sexual assault. An unfortunately popular web forum, Guard Your Eyes, a frum organization that claims to exist for the purpose of helping people with sex addiction, frequently uses the language of addiction for all of those categories – despite them all being radically different from each other.

Shuchatowitz’s rationalization of Steen’s pedophilia also rings disturbingly similar to the excuse Gershom Selinger gave for his sexual abuse of a number of children in his infamous interview with Mendy Pellin. In that video Selinger blames his pedophilia on his wife for not having enough sex with him. To be clear, there is no amount of sex an adult woman can have with a pedophile that will make him no longer a pedophile. Abusers love placing blame on everyone except themselves for their predations, simultaneously offloading blame for the crimes while also forcing their partners to stay with them out of a distorted sense of responsibility to keep them from preying on children. It’s disgusting, and Shuchatowitz is clearly playing into that here.

Later in the video Shuchatowitz says that Steen had admitted to him that he “struggled with a problem” that he had not overcome and that he had slipped “back into certain things.” The level of understanding, limmud zechus, and advocacy someone can get from the Av Beis Din of the Baltimore Beis Din is incredible if they only admit to being a serial sexual abuser of children. And yet, if you’re a victim in Baltimore and you ask your rav if you should report the abuse, chances are you’ll be instructed not to. If you go ahead anyway and report, you can forget about ever getting any help from any of them. Shuchatowitz has never publicly advocated for victims and never will. Yet here he is advocating for a convicted pedophile and blaming it on Steen’s wife.

Later in the video, Neuberger states, in asking the court for leniency, that having Steen separate from his family for a long time is a death sentence to the emotional health of the family, which is a family and can continue as a family the sooner Steen could be in a state of being protected not to hurt anybody else. This from a man who knew for ten years that Steen was an active pedophile and did nothing but cover it up and guilt Steen’s wife into staying with him. “They’ve already gone through hell through all of this,” Neuberger said, “Whatever considerations can be given with balance, I think, is well worth considering.”

Neuberger is the reason that Steen was able to continue procuring and sharing CSAM with his online network of pedophiles, including the videos he had made of himself repeatedly sexually abusing a girl between the ages of 2 and 8. He’s also the one who pushed Steen’s wife to stay with him all those years despite them knowing what he’d done and was doing. And yet, he has the chutzpah to talk about tearing apart a family, as if freeing Steen’s family from him wouldn’t have been the greatest service he could have done for them.

The memo states two things that taken together are heartbreaking. The prosecution writes that the victim herself submitted a sentencing recommendation letter on Steen’s behalf, and also that to date she has never disclosed the abuse directly and has never received any treatment for it.

It’s notable that Steen decided to produce a video to submit in his defense. After all, he was, as we know, an amateur video producer whose videos enjoyed wide distribution. What’s incredible also is the fact that these rabbis continue to submit sentencing recommendation letters even though to date I have yet to ever see a judge indicate that these letters do anything but make them loathe the communities that write them. Over and over again, in case after case, judges have noted with bewilderment the fact that prominent communal leaders write letters on behalf of these abusers while never acknowledging the crimes they committed or expressing any concern for the victims. If anything these letters count against the perpetrator at sentencing, and yet they keep being written.

These people should all be deeply, deeply ashamed of themselves. How Neuberger, Bergman, Shuchatowitz, and Greer live with themselves all these years without the guilt eating them up is anyone’s guess. One wonders if they even have a conscience left to erode at this point.

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Rabbi Shraga Neuberger’s Letter for a Pedophile

A month after his arrest for rape and possession and distribution of CSAM (child sexual abuse materials), Zev Steen submitted an appeal to the Baltimore circuit court of the judge’s decision to hold him without bail until trial. Steen had initially been arrested for possession and distribution of CSAM and granted bond, but was rearrested and denied bond when police found evidence that he had sexually abused a child and filmed it. As part of his appeal seeking bond pending trial, Steen submitted a letter written by Rabbi Shraga Neuberger, a prominent and well respected rebbi at Ner Israel.

The letter, written on NIRC letterhead, describes Steen as “honest and dependable.” In his request for bond he stated that he would likely be living close to NIRC while out on bond.

Nov 16, 2022: I have known William Zev Steen for twenty five years and have had contact with him for much of that time and found him to be honest and dependable. Thank you, Shraga Neuberger Professor of Talmud Ner Israel College

At the time ZA’AKAH called Neuberger out for writing the letter, but Neuberger issued no statement in response. The letter was unfortunately typical of rabbinical leaders in the Orthodox community who often tend to show much more concern for abusers than they do for survivors. This trend continued recently with RCA head, Rabbi Menachem Penner, writing a letter on behalf of Judah Karkowsky who was convicted of forging a court transcript for the purpose of regaining membership at a shul that had expelled him for allegedly abusing a child on an EMT call. Contrast this with SAR which, under threat of termination, forbade employees from writing letters of support for former principal Jonathan Skolnick who had been convicted for blackmailing students into sending him sexual images and videos.

Yesterday a former student of NIRC contacted Rabbi Shraga Neuberger to ask him about the letter he wrote on behalf of Steen. Below is their exchange with commentary.

Neuberger’s Response:

What’s notable about his rationale is his claim that he was unaware if the accusations were true. Later on in the email exchange he seems to believe that the extent of the charges are related to CSAM possession and distribution, and claims that CSAM possession and distribution only directly harms the perpetrator, a dangerous misconception that leads many to minimize the actual damage it causes its victims. David Pelcovitz made the same error when he wrote a letter on behalf of Evan Zauder. In later statements addressing his writing of that letter, Pelcovitz claimed he didn’t know about the charges added against Zauder in a superseding indictment of trying to lure children to sexually abuse.

The problem is twofold: Either he actually didn’t know about the new charges, in which case he was grossly negligent when writing such a serious letter on behalf of a person accused of such serious crimes, or he knew and didn’t care and is only now claiming he didn’t know. Either way his rationale is a serious problem.

Furthermore, innocent until proven guilty is a copout. It’s a legal standard that exists to protect people from having their civil liberties violated by the government without due process, it is not meant to force us to pretend like we aren’t aware of the allegations or the evidence presented with them. A man who shoots another person in the face in broad daylight is also entitled to a legal presumption of innocence even as he stands there with the smoking gun in his hand. That doesn’t require that the bystanders help him reload.

The former student then responds:

Neuberger’s response:

In this response Neuberger, in Trumpian fashion, tries to turn the accusation around by claiming that he in fact cares more about abuse than the former student does and cites his connection to Shimon Russell, a well known therapist in the community who trusts him to consult on sexual abuse cases. He probably doesn’t realize that what he’s saying reflects very poorly on Russell who should not be consulting rabbis on sexual abuse cases, let alone rabbis like Neuberger who clearly don’t get it. Incidentally, Russel is director of training and development at Kesher Nafshi, an organization providing support to at-risk youth and their parents which has had Rav Mota Frank as a speaker several times despite his staunch and public support for convicted serial rapist, Rav Eliezer Berland. Birds of a feather.

Also notable is this allusion to inside information that he claims to have about a prior CPS interview of Steen’s children. The relevance of a CPS investigation that’s over a decade old is anyone’s guess.

The former student then asks:

Neuberger’s response:

Typos aside, there’s a lot to unpack in this response. At the beginning of his response he claims that the only damage done in this case was to Steen himself, and that he has been going for help for years, whatever that means. This is a common tactic taken by abusers and their enablers who try to minimize the effects of CSAM on their victims. Victims of CSAM are directly damaged by the possession and distribution of the images of their abuse.

They live with the constant knowledge that an immeasurable number of people have seen their abuser and derived sexual satisfaction from it. They live in constant doubt about whether the people looking at them are just looking at them or are recognizing them from the images of their abuse. They can never fully heal because their abuse is never fully over. Every time it’s shared their abuse intensifies. Every time they are recognized by law enforcement in another collection discovered in an investigation and are notified that their images have been found their abuse continues. CSAM is the opposite of a victimless crime.

Another common tactic used by abusers and their enablers is claiming that the abuse they engaged in is no longer relevant or reflective of their character because they went to therapy. There are no treatments that can reliably remove the risk a pedophile poses to children, and pretending otherwise simply puts children in the community at risk. Enablers like Neuberger will do anything but center the victims in their calculus, instead feeling sadness for the abuser and expressing concern for their wellbeing.

The rest of the response is addressing the former student’s leaving of Orthodoxy. The juxtaposition of Neuberger’s expression of concern for Steen and his attacking the former student’s life away from Orthodoxy as empty and meaningless is jarring and disturbing. If the meaning Neuberger finds in frumkeit leads him to side with abusers and minimize the effects of sexual abuse then what is any of it worth?

Neuberger’s response:

In other words, you’re too stupid and misguided to understand the complexities of this case, so I’m done engaging.

The former student tries again:

Neuberger’s response:

Here we see that after being informed (perhaps for the first time although that’s unlikely) that Steen actually was accused of directly sexually abusing a child, recording, and distributing it, Neuberger again engages in deflection. He doesn’t see value in discussing it because the only move left for him in this conversation is to acknowledge either his ignorance or his indifference, and that’s off the table for him. Instead he pretends that he cares about sexual abuse victims equally if not more than the former student does when all he’s done in this exchange has been center the abuser and defend and advocate for him. They are very clearly not in agreement, but Neuberger has nothing further to say for himself.

And of course, as with all of these rabbis and community leaders who defend and support abusers, there will be no consequences for his involvement in this case. No one will make him sit down and be educated. None of his peers and colleagues will tell him he’s wrong and explain why. Nothing will change.

Below is a screenshot from Steen’s plea agreement that Neuberger was sent by the former student. He has yet to respond to it.

Standard