For those of you unfamiliar, the SRE Network (Safety, Respect, Equity) was founded in 2018 in response to the #MeToo movement which swept through the Jewish private and nonprofit sectors as well, exposing many well-known abusers and finally allowing the stories of their victims to be told. The goal of the SRE Network was to documenting their testimonies, develop robust organizational policies for Jewish institutions, support respectful workplace training, improve hiring and advancement practices, and further gender equity in the rabbinate.

Since then they’ve done incredible work, pouring funding into efforts that have led to measurable improvements in currently accepted best practices across those sectors, and creating a space for dialogue and development of best-practices based policy recommendations for member institutions.

With a couple of notable exceptions.

One in particular.

In 2019 I was made aware of sexual harassment committed by a now-former board member of a prominent SRE member organization. Following complaints by staff of this organization to the board, the employees who complained were retaliated against and were made to sign NDAs as a condition of their severance. At the time I approached the new executive director of that member organization and attempted to convince her to resolve the outstanding claims to the satisfaction of the victims. On the advice of experts in the field, a number of recommendations were made to this executive director on how to resolve the outstanding issue. While this executive director had originally shown good faith on the issue, she very quickly started pushing the company line, so to speak, secure in the knowledge that the victims of the harassment were muzzled by the NDAs they’d been made to sign.

This organization then joined SRE.

Mind you, by the time they joined, what had happened with their former board member was a somewhat open secret within the Jewish nonprofit world, including within other SRE members. This resulted in a conflict within SRE which led to this organization staying and an SRE advisor leaving in protest.

Since then, anytime anyone has mentioned SRE to me I’ve told them this story to explain why I’ve never sought to join SRE, accept any of their funding, or seek any of their promotion. Also since then, as this story has become more well known, I’ve been finding it increasingly frustrating to see how many organizations whose leadership knows exactly what that organization did to its former employees nonetheless continue to enthusiastically work with them.

A few months ago, an SRE advisor I’m friends with connected me with SRE leadership and we began discussing a way forward for SRE in light of their malfeasant member’s unrepentant refusal to resolve what they did to their former employees. For the most part I’ve been polite if forceful with SRE leadership on this issue.

However, while I understand that expecting institutions like SRE to move quickly to resolve anything may be like watching Titanic and expecting the ship to turn away from the iceberg if the audience yells loudly enough through the screen at the captain, I don’t need their money, and I don’t need to have patience. The fact that they knowingly have a malfeasant member that has shown no interest in making restitution to their former employees makes me wholly unsympathetic to the realities of the glacial pace of institutional movement.

People were hurt, and those people continue to be hurt by the presence of the institution that hurt them and did nothing to make amends for it remaining the member of a network purportedly constituted to promote Safety, Respect, and Equity.

I would therefore encourage those friends of mine who are either members of the SRE leadership team, leadership of SRE member organizations, or grant recipients from SRE, to insist that SRE adopt a mandatory policy requiring that SRE members immediately cease any use of nondisclosure agreements for anything other than proprietary trade secrets, retroactively void any NDAs already issued to current and former employees, and publicly commit to not enforcing any previously issued NDAs. Failure to do so should result in expulsion from the SRE network.

Given how many stories we’ve seen of lives destroyed, victims silenced, and abusers protected by the use of NDAs, there is no excuse for their continued use. There never was, but now there are no longer any excuses to pretend they don’t know better. It would be wildly hypocritical to stand on the shoulders of those who led the #MeToo movement while clinging to the instruments that necessitated the movement in the first place.

Any SRE member that refuses to comply with this policy should rightly have a lot of explaining to do as to why they’re reluctant to adopt this policy.

The following letter was sent by a survivor of Chaim Walder to Rabbi Ron Yitzchok Eisenman, rabbi of Congregation Ahavas Israel of Passaic. It was sent in full to the shul’s mailing list. I’m sharing it here so it can reach a wider audience. The survivor, whose name has been changed for this letter, is using the pseudonym Rena Solomon. The only edits that have been made by me are in formatting. Below is her letter as translated from Hebrew by Rabbi Eisenman

When Weeping Is Not Enough

by Rena Salomon

Dear Rabbi Eisenman,

My name is Rena Salomon, and I am a victim of cw.

I say this is in the present tense because even though he is dead (may the name of the wicked rot), he still terrorizes and victimizes me. I have never been to Passaic, New Jersey, and I am sure we don’t travel in the same circles.

Why am I writing to you?

I could pander to you and tell you that I am writing because “you get it.” However, that would be a lie. You may want to get it and try to get it, but you can’t, and you will never “get it.” My great grand-parents both did a stint in Hell on Earth. The world knows it as Auschwitz. They passed away when I was a child. My grandmother told me that her parents never spoke about being incarcerated in Hell.

The first time she asked her mother about the strange numbers on her forearm, her mother cried, pulled down her sleeve to the wrist, and through her tears said only, “mein baliebte tochter, vet keinmal nisht farshteyn” (my beloved daughter, you will never understand). Much later, my grandmother understood why her mother never spoke about it. Survivors such as my great-grandmother were embarrassed to speak about Auschwitz for the first few years. They always felt as if the listener blamed them for being in Auschwitz or never fully believed what they endured and how painful and life-changing it was.

Later in life, when the street narrative changed and holocaust survivors became heroic people who you should seek out for Brochus, my great-grandmother still chose to remain silent. When asked by her daughter, who by then was herself a grandmother, “Why, Mama, do you still remain silent?” My great-grandmother answered with a wave of her hand, “ich darf nisht kein rachmonus” (I don’t need anyone’s pity).

So too, Rabbi Eisenman, there are still many people who blame me for being molested. They ask me (or I can tell that they at least want to ask me) the same question as they questioned (or wanted to question) my great-grandmother, “Why didn’t you fight back?” Certainly, those people don’t get it as they persist in their belief that most victims are either lying, exaggerating or loshon hora mongers who have thinly-veiled agendas to destroy Orthodox Jewry. Thankfully, as time has gone on and more people have come forward, and the realization is beginning to take hold that sexual abuse occurs, the reaction of some people towards the victims has changed. Just as people began to change in their reaction to Holocaust survivors, people are also changing in their response to abuse survivors.

The reaction varies from disbelief at worst to pity and compassion at best. As much as compassion is better than feeling repulsed, rejected, tainted, and not believed, I say to you Rabbi Eisenman as my alter-bubbe told my grandmother, “ich darf nisht kein rachmonus.” I, and survivors like me, are not interested in being looked at as pitiful, stained misfits who now deserve your “deepest sympathies.” Rather, we need people to believe us and in us. And we need people to treat us as true survivors who have withstood the horrors of abuse and molestation and are still functioning human beings.

You want to commiserate and validate my pain. However, you have never done a stint in Hell on Earth on the folding cot in cw’s warehouse while being raped between stacks and stacks of books whose themes were helping, protecting, and empowering children. You have never lived a day in Hell where the daily schedule consisted of being violated and humiliated by the man (whose horrid breath I smell every day of my life) who was regarded by hundreds of thousands of admirers- as the ultimate protector of children. I appreciate your compassion, but never think Rabbi Eisenman (or any other rabbi) that you “really get it.” Unless you too were incarcerated, battered, humiliated, and wounded for life by the recipient of the 2003 Magen LeYeled (Defender of the Child) award from the Israel National Council for the Child- you don’t get it.

Would you ever tell someone who was in Auschwitz, “Yes, yes, I understand your pain? I, too, went through hard times.” That statement would be laughable cruel, and insensitive. Just as you can never understand imprisonment at Auschwitz, you can never understand being a caged twelve-year-old girl enslaved and subjugated by an evil, pernicious pedophile.

This pedophile is the embodiment of brutality and heartlessness. For me and hundreds of others, he was the most demonic creature to walk the face of this Earth. Therefore, you can never fully understand as sympathetic as you are, although I appreciate your sincere desire to understand.

There is something; I, too, will never understand. I will never understand how any sane individual, much less a rabbi, could allow cw’s books to remain part of a home or school library. If your grandmother was medically experimented on by Josef Mengele Yimach Shemo, would you ever think to allow his medical books in a Jewish home?

I and dozens if not hundreds were sexually experimented on by cw Yimcah Shemo.

The debate surrounding the retention of his books speaks volumes of the insensitivity of our Tzibbur to sexual molestation. Yet, my optimistic, hopeful self tells me to write with the hope that words that emanate from the heart will enter the heart of my readers. After encouragement from my own Rav and therapist, I have decided to put into words my story.

Why now?

There has been much discussion and analysis in the Jewish world regarding the cw debacle. I have read and heard it all. Everything I have read and heard has been from people commenting on the events from the outside. I have been obsessed with the demise of this putrid, fetid monster ever since he did the greatest favor to the Jewish people (if only he had done so decades ago) by bringing to an end to his thirty-year reign of terror. Which I must add, was known about by much more people than you can ever imagine. How embarrassing it is and how ironic it is for our Tzibbur that a left-wing anti-religious newspaper was the savior, hero, and true defender of Chareidi Jewry, as it was their exposé that finally stopped the monster.

I’ll leave the message Hashem wants us to take from this to the rabbis.

Since, as mentioned, everything printed or posted has been from outsiders, namely, people who were never abused and certainly not by cw, I have decided to take my rightful place on the platform. Why should only those with outside knowledge comment, analyze, critique, and in some cases even justify cw?Should I not have a place at the table? After all, I spent more nights than I care to admit in the company of the embodiment of Satan himself. Who else has the right to be heard if not me?

Before I write about my feelings about how we should react, I want to tell you about myself to understand where I am coming from. I am the youngest of a large Hareidi family in Bnei Brak. When I was twelve years old, I began to act out in school. My parents took me to the Center for the Child and Family in Bnei Brak to be evaluated. A week after the evaluation, a phone call informed us that I had an appointment with a therapist for that Wednesday.

When I arrived, I was told to wait in an office for the therapist. To my amazement and the joy of my family, cw himself entered the room, introduced himself, and said he was going to be my therapist. I silently thanked Hashem for my good fortune of having the privilege of cw himself being my therapist. At first, he encouraged me to talk about myself and my family. Sometimes the questions he asked about the relationships between family members were strange to me. However, I was sure that cw knew what he was doing; after all, he was cw.

Soon his questions focused on me and my personal life. He asked me questions that I could not believe a man – much less a rabbi, much less a person such as cw who our family and almost every family we knew listened to him on the radio every week- would ask. He asked me if I had reached menarche. I was shocked and embarrassed by this question. I was going to tell my mother. However, I was too ashamed to say anything; after all, my mother was thrilled that cw had picked me to “treat.”

Soon he began to touch me. My body froze in horror when his maniacal hands touched my body. I was a twelve-year-old Hareidi girl brought up with “Kol kevuda bas Melech penima”- “The royal daughter is all glorious within the palace.” Meaning I should be quiet and obedient to my elders and not assert myself. I was taught to be submissive, especially to rabbis and cw was a great rabbi. “Hisbatlus”- to subordinate yourself to rabbinic will was the creed and doctrine of my upbringing.

The touching continued, and cw became progressively more aggressive. I told my best friend that I see cw every week. As can be predicted, soon, every girl in the class knew that I met one on one with cw every week. Girls would ask, “Does he give you free books? He must be so kind and understanding.”

Do you know what it is at twelve years old to have every girl in your class know that you know cw and be reminded of this daily? Can you imagine what it feels like to be raped at ten in the morning and then return to school, and all the girls crowd around to ask, “How did it go?” Do you know what pain and anguish it is to return to class after being assaulted by this monster only to discover that the Morah is reading aloud from Yeladim Mesaprim (Kid’s Speak) as a reward for good behavior?

Why didn’t I tell my mother? You must be joking.

My mother proudly asks, “How was it seeing cw today?”

Do I tell my mother, “That’s exactly the problem, I am seeing too much of cw”!

Can I tell my mother he did things that I have no facility to understand and process?

Do I tell my mother I need to see a therapist to speak to as the therapist’s therapist two hours ago assaulted me and left me to cry myself to sleep alone as I wonder if what happened in that warehouse made me pregnant?

Can you understand the loneliness, isolation, sense of abandonment, alienation, and desolation that a twelve-year-old girl from Bnei Brak feels as she cries herself to sleep nightly and quite often still does?
As a girl from Bnei Brak, I knew that we call out to Hashem in times of pain, and He will take away the pain.

Whenever his horrific hands touched my body, I cried and cried to Hashem to take away the pain. Yet, as I once heard my great-grandmother utter in a rare moment of complete candor, “Hashem forgot about us in Auschwitz.” So too, Hashem forgot about me in that warehouse in Bnei Brak, where a cot is sandwiched between the stacks of “inspirational books empowering children.”

I quickly dispelled that heretical thought from my mind and settled on a more acceptable explanation: “I am bad, and I am stained, and people like me are not worthy of Hashem’s kindness.” I appreciate your concern and validation; however, recognize the reality that your validation and empathy are limited to your life’s experience, and you were never a twelve-year girl being raped weekly by cw.

I knew it was wrong.

I knew a girl my age was not allowed to be alone with another man in a warehouse. But, a great rabbi was doing this, a person who I was taught to obey as he can do no wrong. It was drilled into me since I could walk that “we obediently listen to the rabbis’ without questioning. I knew from school, from home, from the streets of Bnei Brak, that we obediently listen to the rabbis’ without questioning. The great rabbis, and only they, possess this secret, mysterious, nebulous, amorphous power called Daas Torah.

I was raised with the dogmatic belief that women cannot decide important life-changing issues. Important issues are decided by those who have Daas Torah. If not considered the actual depository of Daas Torah, cw certainly had the backing and stamp of approval of Daas Torah. At the beginning of his books, there are glowing approbations and letters of validation from those who possess Daas Torah. Therefore, when cw told me we were taking a little trip to his warehouse, I obeyed; after all, obedience to those who represent DaasTorah is paramount.

Nobody ever told me that “all the glitters is not gold?”

Not once in all my years of education did a Morah, Menhales, Mechaneches, or anyone else in school inform me that Rabbis can be bad and do very bad things to little girls. We received no warnings of what to do if a man touches you. No one ever said, “If a man ever touches you in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable, no matter who he is, even a great rabbi, run away as fast as you can.” Not once did any educator tells us that all people can be bad.

We were taught rabbis are good, and greater rabbis are perfect. What was drilled into us was obedience without question to rabbinic authority.

So I lived in two worlds. At school, I was a Bais Yaakov Maidel, saying Tehillim and acting like any other girl. Yet, when cw had me, I became a sex slave, a Zonah, a harlot, a tramp, and a concubine to Satan himself.

Take a breath, Rabbi Eisenman. I know it’s painful to hear. But, I need to vent and pour out my pain. I would imagine that it’s not often that a woman who has a family of her own, a woman who no man besides her husband has ever seen one lock of her hair, talks like this. However, the same little girl who learned to compartmentalize life at age twelve and live simultaneously in two worlds is now a grown woman who still lives a double life. When I see my husband put on his Shtreimel Friday afternoons and he walks with our boys to Shul, I am filled with gratitude to Hashem for a wonderful, understanding husband and beautiful children. Yet, when I go light Shabbos candles and must face Hashem alone, my thoughts wander back to that warehouse of books in Bnei Brak.

I tremble as I light the match, and I begin to shudder and convulse. Every week for years and years, the same scenario repeats itself. I am ashamed and feel stained and sullied and most of all unworthy to light the Shabbos candles, which bring light when so much of my life was a black hole of darkness. You have no idea of what I (and many other survivors) experience when we are expected to enter the purifying water of the mikveh.

The destruction this satanic figure wrought in his thirty-year reign of terror will never be quantified or properly understood.

I know Rabbi Eisenman; you don’t have to defend or answer for anyone. I write these words not expecting you to answer, but rather as a crucial and essential cathartic exercise which I pray will help me one day achieve a true catharsis and relief for my troubled soul. I ask Mechilla in advance for any words that may seem disrespectful or disparaging. However, my goal is not to foster Machlokes; my goal is for all of us to come to a greater mutual understanding of the pervasive yet, currently silenced and swept-under-the-rug-problem of sexual molestation in our camp.

My goal is to be honest, raw, and real.

If I cannot reveal my true feelings, am I not still in the confining clutches of cw? Who inhibited and squelched me from speaking for so long. Can you deny a survivor her right to have her say after years of communal confinement? Is “our Tzibbur” so fragile that honest, heartfelt questions cannot be put forth?

I pray that is not the case.

Rabbi Lopiansky writes, concerning sexual abuse, ” if you prefer truth over enjoying life, you will discover a Gehinnom that exists here in our world.” I know the truth, and I saw a Gehinom that exists in this world. I “discovered” it lying on a cot between the aisles of a dust-filled warehouse as a man I had once idolized forced me to live in Hell. I discovered Gehinom in a hotel room in Ramat Gan as I was painfully violated and sentenced to live a Hellish existence until the day I die.

Rabbi Lopiansky, you are correct in referring to it as Gehinom. I prefer the English word Hell as it conveys the filth and nightmarishness of the experience. When we use Hebrew words, too often we sanitize and euphemize what should be explicit and clear. As a Bais Yaakov graduate and a victim of cw, I feel qualified to comment on how the “outside” world interpreted and explained (away) the infamous and vile debacle of cw.

For the first time in my life, you allow my voice to be heard. You are allowing me, in my own words, to tell my story.

I am tired of hearing my story told by others, especially those who never experienced Hell on Earth. I am tired of being told how I should feel, and I am tired of keeping my innermost pain buried deep in my Neshama.

I have a right to speak.

I have a right to have my voice heard.

I recently read an article by Rabbi Aaron Lopiansky titled, “For This, We Weep.” (It was originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 893; January 4, 2022) Rabbi Lopiansky, who I have heard is a very gentle and understanding person, presented a hypothesis to explain the almost pandemic problem of sexual abuse within the Chareidi world. Rabbi Lopiansky never mentions cw or any other known abuser by name, although he alludes to them. Rabbi Lopiansky is a man of integrity, and I am sure (as he says) he would encourage me to write the following piece.

He states the critical importance of hearing from survivors. Here are his own l words:

[“]A few years ago, I was involved in the publication of an issue of Dialogue on the topic of molestation and abuse. Included were lengthy interviews with professionals in the field and other related articles.
One article was written by a survivor. It is a person known to me whose every word is to be believed, someone who leads an extremely honorable and chashuve life. After the person opened up to me, I was shocked. He seemed to live such a fine and happy life. And only then did I discover what kind of Gehinnom he lived in. Decades after the events, he still lives with the trauma and has occasional suicidal thoughts.

To quote an adam gadol who read the article, “It has changed my understanding of what abuse and trauma are all about. I’ve turned from an agnostic to a fervent believer.”[‘]

https://mishpacha.com/for-this-we-weep/

If I can change people’s understanding of what abuse and trauma are all about. And convince one more agnostic to (become) a fervent believer- I will be satisfied.

Rabbi Lopiansky deals with why abuse is so prevalent in our community- or as he calls us, “our Tzibbur”?Rabbi Lopiansky contends, “there is another reason why our tzibbur keeps falling into this situation time and again, and that is the “halo” effect. We have the misguided notion that “if it glitters it is gold,” all the way through. We feel that if a person is doing good in one area, he is perfect in every area. In order to move forward, we need to first rid ourselves of a fatal flaw.

The most fallacious statement in our misguided thinking is, “someone who does good, cannot possibly be bad in any way.”

This is flat-out wrong”

I, of course, know first hand that the above point is true. However, with complete deference to Rabbi Lopiansky, I must ask, where does he think we came up with (as he calls it) the “misguided notion that … if a person is doing good in one area, he is perfect in every area.”?

Rabbi Lopianky, forgive me, but I must ask, “Who implanted in “our Tzibbur” this “fatal flaw” in our “misguided thinking?” Why does “our Tzibbur” (as opposed to a secular or non-Jewish community) have this “fatal flaw” in our “misguided thinking?”

Did it fall from heaven?

Why do we think “someone who does good, cannot possibly be bad in any way.”? Do non-religious Jews better understand human nature than “our Tzibbur”? I believe that you and I both know the answer. However, it is too uncomfortable and politically incorrect to verbalize. However, as a survivor, I have no hesitations or reason to be politically correct. I did my time in the trenches of cw and was exposed to things a twelve-year-old should have never seen or experienced.

Perhaps you were anticipating and waiting for me to come forward. I believe b’emunah Sheleima; it is my calling to say what is in my heart. We possess this “misguided thinking” because our teachers instructed us in this manner. Where else could it come from?

I was taught in Bais Yaakov that rabbis are good people, basically flawless individuals. Excuse me for being audacious, however, when you wrote, “The most fallacious statement in our misguided thinking is, “someone who does good, cannot possibly be bad in any way.” Are there exceptions to this rule, namely people who we must accept as a truth that they “cannot possibly be bad in any way?”

You stress that we have the misguided belief that “if it glitters it is gold”. And you continue to point out, “In order to move forward, we need to first rid ourselves of a fatal flaw.” We are a Tzibbur which prides itself on “Moshe Emes V” Soraso Emes”. If so, where and how did our Tzibbur come to embrace such a fatally flawed, misguided way of thinking? Your average ignoramus, which you will find on any street corner, knows that all that glitters is not gold. How can it be that such a simple, self-compelling truth is not part of our Tzibbur’s collaborative thinking?

The obvious answer as to why our Tzibbur is stricken with the halo effect is because the halo effect is part and parcel of every Bais Yaakov girl’s education. Some evil spirit did not fall from the Shomayim and smitten us with “misguided thinking.” Indeed, embracing the “halo” effect and believing the misguided thinking that all that glitters is gold signifies a successful Bais Yaakov education.

Please forgive me, and cut me some slack. However, you hit a raw nerve in my Neshama. Thousands and thousands of Bais Yaakov girls are being programmed as we speak to believe rabbis are the correct address for proper counseling.

Emunas chachomim is a bedrock principle in Bais Yaakov. No Morah in any Bais Yaakov adds the caveat when she speaks about rabbonim, “But, girls, beware, even the good rabbis can be bad. Even good rabbis can be rapists, sexual predators, narcissists, mafia-chieftains, crooks, philanderers, debauched and depraved perverts who may attempt to rape you?”

If “our Tzibbur” has this “misguided thinking,” it came from the educators in the classrooms of “our Tzibbur!”

I can confidently say that in no Bais Yaakov classroom in Bnei Brak are the girls informed that good rabbis can also be very wicked people. And I doubt there is a Bais Yaakov in the world where the Moros make sure to impress upon the girls that they should know, “Even the great Tzadikim who we tell stories about- might assault you and traumatize you for life. Therefore girls, remember, even the good people who seem to glitter may have a dark side to them.”

You write, “In order to move forward, we need to first rid ourselves of a fatal flaw”. How do you propose “ridding ourselves of this fatal flaw” if it is being taught as a fundamental dogmatic principle in Bais Yaakov’s around the world?

Rabbi Lopiansky, are you a maverick and are proposing radical curriculum changes to our Bais Yaakov program? (I hope you are) Are you saying that Bais Yaakov Moros begin to start to warn their charges that not all rabbis are what they seem to be?

If you are, then you are my hero.

If such is your intent, you hit the nail on the head.

The only way to rid our Tzibbur of misguided thinking that all that glitters is gold is to proactively educate girls about life’s “real” facts from a young age. Namely, all men (and even women) can be bad people and hurt you very badly. If such had been my chinuch, I would have never fallen into the clutches of that fetid receptacle of fecal matter feigning to be human. If I were told this fact from the age of seven and retold it every year, when cw brought me into his office to place his putrid paws on me, I would have been prepared and protected. If only we knew (as you so eloquently write), “Even if one has bright and dazzling light radiating in his soul, it is not at all to the exclusion of him also having patches of darkness”- many girls and women would have been spared pain and suffering.

Rabbi Lopiansky, you are so right. This “everyone is always good” approach has worn out its usefulness.
If we want to rid our Tzibbur of this plague of molestation, an overhaul of girl’s Chinuch is step number one.

Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz taught, “Ohr v’chosech mishtamshim b’irbuvya” [lit. light and darkness are concomitant] we must embrace his deep insight. We must begin to teach our girls to be vigilant and unafraid to stand up for themselves. We must tell them that everyone, a rabbi, a therapist, a morah, and even a family member, has no right to touch you in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable. If real change is to be had, we must expunge from our girls the misguided thought that all that glitters is gold.
Our girls must know the truth, namely, that everyone, literally everyone, can be bad.

Our daughters need to be drilled in the ugly truth that they must protect themselves from anyone who tries to violate them sexually, even if that person is in their own home.

Rabbi Lopiansky, I am sure you know that the overwhelming occurrence of sexual molestation occurs in the home where the perpetrator is a family member. Attend any support group of female survivors of sexual abuse, and you will quickly realize that the overwhelming majority of them were attacked and molested by brothers, step-fathers, cousins, uncles, sisters, and unbelievably shocking but true, even their father.

The “bad” therapist and the “bad” Rebbe or rabbi account for less than 10% of molestation.

Too often, a girl’s own bedroom is her Hell on Earth.

We must instill in our daughters this information. They must have the necessary tools to fight back.
Misguided thinking leads to fatal flaws in life. Educating our girls, especially at a young age, leads to empowerment and resistance to abuse. Our girls must know that if they are touched by a family member or a therapist, Rebbe, or whoever, they should immediately yell and scream. They should scream at the top of their lungs and claw and bite their molester if needed. Most molesters are spineless cowards who melt away at first sight of resistance.

The proof is in cw. As soon as he was exposed, he did the spinless act of shooting himself in the head.

The best weapon in our arsenal is our ability to shame and expose the molester.

The molesters best friend is the Sefer Chofetz Chaim. They rely on the fact that their victim will be silent.

The first step in eradicating molestation in our community is, as Rabbi Lopiansky states, ridding our Tzibbur of the misguided thought that all that glitters is gold. Once we have purified the minds of our daughters with the knowledge that anyone is potentially a molester, we can arm them with tools to fight back and protest. When molesters realize that their formerly meek and submissive victims are now fortified fighters of abuse, who refuse to go down without a fight and refuse to remain silent, they will crawl back into their private den of iniquity.

We should supply every Bais Yaakov girl with the reporter’s phone number from Haaretz as they alone seem up to the task of being brave enough to take down a monster. Hope is on the horizon once we have finally rid our daughters (and sons) of these fatal flaws of thinking all is good and glittery.

When I finally told my mother, and she told the local rabbi, I was violated again, this time emotionally. I was not believed, and even if finally, some local rabbis did, believe me, my pain was minimized, swept under the rug, and I was never validated. That is why I had to move from Bnei Brak. The approach of complete denial or minimization of the abuse, always lacking any validation of my pain, drove me far, far away from the environs of my hometown.

Rabbi Eisenman, I have taken too much of your time already. I end with a few closing remarks.

Rabbi Lopiansky writes, “Yes, you will righteously declare, “the rabbanim ought to do x, y, z.” I need to break the news to you: There is no organization called “the rabbanim.” There are thousands of rabbanim, rebbeim, ramim, each inundated with the needs and demands of their communities and talmidim. But each one is a yachid, overwhelmed by the particular needs of his charges.”

https://mishpacha.com/for-this-we-weep/

I must ask Rabbi Lopiansky, “Yes, of course, there is no organization called “the Rabbanim,” but please don’t play me the fool by claiming that rabbis never act in unison or as an organization. You know better than me that as we speak, high-stakes politics are going on In Israel involving the religious identity of the Jewish State.

I have seen numerous proclamations signed by many well-known and high-profile Rabbis taking a stand TOGETHER condemning an individual minister or an Israeli government policy. I have yet to see the same signatures on a joint proclamation condemning cw (or Eliezer Berland, who you allude to in your article), notwithstanding the clear danger of these people to vulnerable Jewish children.

When it comes to supporting the oppressed and abused, namely victims of sexual assault, they are overwhelmed and have no time? Can they not find the same time to issue a proclamation supporting victims of cw? Does this respectful question not deserve an honest answer?”

I conclude with my revulsion to the most painful post I have ever read. I must react and protest as the truth must be revealed, and sheker must be called out!

A noted female educator, Tzipora Heller, shockingly wrote,

“Chaim Walder’s 53 books were inspiring, sensitively written, and sold 2 million copies, a record for Israel. He lost his balance. I didn’t stand in his shoes. Hashem is called The Place in which the world exists. Pirkei Avos tells you not to judge anyone until you stand in their place, where something pure remains.”

http://www.tziporahheller.com/from-the-rebbetzins-desk/the-chaim-walder-parsha

Mrs. Heller’s remarks are too painful to believe that a Jewish mother wrote them. Suffice to say, they trigger strong flashbacks and are so hurtful I will limit myself to one comment.

Mrs. Heller, you wrote,

“I didn’t stand in his shoes. Hashem is called The Place in which the world exists. Pirkei Avos tells you not to judge anyone until you stand in their place, where something pure remains.”

http://www.tziporahheller.com/from-the-rebbetzins-desk/the-chaim-walder-parsha

Mrs. Heller, I did stand in chaim walder’s shoes; I did stand in his place, too many times that I care to remember.

Let me make one thing, Mrs. Heller, crystal clear.

There is no purity in the place of chaim walder. Instead, there is filth, wasted seed, abuse, rape, violent humiliation of a twelve-year-old girl, evil in its worst form. In his place, there is trauma and destruction of souls. In his place, the only thing pure which remains is pure persistent perpetual pain and anguish.

Shame on you, Mrs. Heller!

You prove Rabbi Lopiansky’s thesis that the belief that “someone who does good, cannot possibly be bad in any way… is flat-out wrong.” I am sure you have done good; however, the bad that you did with your post is a shameful culmination of your life in Jewish education.

Mrs. Heller, you mentioned, “I didn’t stand in his shoes.”

I did stand in his shoes.

I was forced to stand in his shoes and forced to be in his place. As a person who has a right to judge cw, after all, Pirkei Avos tells you not to judge anyone until you stand in their place, and I did stand in his place; I judge him to be a wicked evil man. A man who was allowed by cowardly and spinless people to continue assaulting boys, girls, and women for decades. Ultimately, I judge him worse than a murderer. A murderer kills your physical body while the soul remains pure. The pedophile not only abuses and humiliates the body, but it also kills your soul forever.

I judge him as a man who stole my innocence, girlhood, adolescence, and naivete.

I judge him for taking away from me the excitement and anticipation every Kallah deserves the day of her wedding and replacing it with dread and horrible flashbacks.

I judge him for stealing my love of life and love of all aspects of marriage.

He caused me horrific spiritual and emotional damage, which is irreparable and continues to haunt me. May his name rot, and may his name be blotted out through the eradication of his books from this world forever.

I conclude with gratitude for finally allowing me to have a voice.

I conclude with an appreciation for helping me carry my burden.

Knowing that my voice is heard makes me optimistic that tomorrow will be better. The more you hear my voice, the more I know that Hashem has indeed listened to my voice.

And that knowledge is comforting.

With pain and gratitude,
Rena Salomon,
formerly of Bnei Brak currently living in the United States

Hayim Nissim Cohen, formerly known as Jeffrey Lujan Vejil of Odessa Texas, is the subject of both a civil suit and a criminal indictment for sexual abuse of children. Cohen gained some notoriety for being a Chassidic, single, adoptive father of 9 in Houston Texas. He has been written about in many Jewish and non-Jewish media outlets, and runs a website about his family called Our Unique Family. Cohen has presented in recent years. For starters, in a 2019 Jewish Press article Cohen seems to have represented himself as a Williamsburg native who moved to Texas in his 20s and had a brief stint in social work. He represented himself in the same way in an interview for the Adath Israel of San Francisco blog. Neither of those things is true.  

According to the civil suit filed against him, Hayim Nissim Cohen was born Jeffrey Lujan Vejil in 1984 in Odessa, Texas. This is confirmed by a quick Google search finding only one Jeffrey Lujan Vejil in the state of Texas born in 1984. According to the Odessa High School website Jeffrey was part of the graduating class of 2002. In 2005 a picture of him was featured in the Odessa American assisting in relief efforts at a Red Cross shelter set up at UTPB in Odessa, Texas following Hurricane Rita. While he is listed as having attended high school from 1998-2002, I couldn’t find any records online of which college he may have attended to study social work. I was also unable to find any social work license, current or expired, for either Hayim Nissim Cohen, or Jeffrey Vejil. Given the image in the Odessa American, Cohen was not a Williamsbug native, and definitely was born, raised, and lived in Texas until 2005.

By presenting himself as a Williamsburg native to the Jewish press Cohen was no doubt trying to avoid discussing his conversion to Judaism, which, if it happened, would have had to happen after 2005. There are other inconsistencies as well. In a 2017 interview with Houston Family Magazine, Cohen says that his children, who at the time numbered 6, were either able to speak or write Hebrew. However, in a 2019 Jewish Herald-Voice article he claims that 7 of his 9 adopted children were originally from Yiddish speaking families, and two were from Hebrew speaking families. In the different interviews he’s done he seems to tailor the narrative of himself and his family to suit the outlet’s audience.  

In October of 2019, Hayim Nissim Cohen was charged with Indecency with a Child related to Sexual Contact, a third-degree felony in the state of Texas. According to the Texas penal code:

A person commits an offense if, with a child younger than 17 years of age, whether the child is of the same or opposite sex and regardless of whether the person knows the age of the child at the time of the offense, the person:

(1) engages in sexual contact with the child or causes the child to engage in sexual contact;  or

(2) with intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person:

(A) exposes the person’s anus or any part of the person’s genitals, knowing the child is present;  or

(B) causes the child to expose the child’s anus or any part of the child’s genitals.

On the 28^th of October, 2019 Cohen surrendered himself to police. Following his arraignment, he was released on 25,000 bond. This was later raised to $75,000 after a failure to appeal resulted in the revocation of his original bond. The case is still active with the next hearing scheduled for February 10^th, 2022.

In April of 2021, a civil complaint was filed against Hayim Nissim Cohen for the abuse charged in the criminal complaint. According to the complaint, Plaintiff was a foreign exchange student from Spain participating in a foreign student exchange program facilitated by Estudiar en USA on the Spanish side, and Educational Resource Development Trust’s (ERDT) Share! High School Student Exchange Program on the American side. According to ERDT’s Share! website, they perform background checks on all parents who apply to host foreign exchange students. According to the complaint, Cohen had applied in 2014 and then again in 2018 to be a host parent for foreign exchange students. Detailed in the complaint are the numerous lies Cohen told on his background check application.

First, according to the complaint, Cohen listed an incorrect date of birth. He allegedly listed his work as “foundation” and his position as “rabbi” and provided his own cellphone number as his work number. The complaint further alleges that Cohen had stated that neither he nor anyone in his household had ever been arrested or convicted of any offense greater than a minor traffic offense. This was a lie. According to a criminal court search of the Ector County court records, Cohen, while still Jeffrey Vejil, had been arrested and convicted three times between 2005-2006 for misdemeanor theft.

The complaint further alleges that when asked for two character references within the Houston area, Cohen provided two names of people outside Houston, and that the phone numbers he provided for those people not only weren’t theirs, but actually belonged to Cohen and one of his children. The complaint also alleges that Cohen lied on the background check about never having received public assistance. According to the complaint, the background check didn’t turn up any information about his arrests or convictions, or even his name change from Jeffrey Vejil to Hayim Nissim Cohen, and many other claims Cohen had made which were allegedly lies. Nevertheless, according to the complaint, ERDT approved Cohen to be a host for foreign exchange students.

The complaint alleges that following his approval Cohen was provided with applications and photographs of foreign exchange students by ERDT, and that Cohen selected Plaintiff. According to the complaint, ERDT’s policies required that their staff remain in contact with foreign exchange students placed in host homes and regularly check in with the. Plaintiff alleges that not only did ERDT staff not keep in contact, but that Cohen had confiscated Plaintiff’s phone to prevent him from communicating with ERDT staff or his family. Despite this, ERDT allegedly continued to place foreign exchange students with Cohen.

According to the complaint, on numerous occasions between September 2018 and April 2019, while Plaintiff was between 15 and 16 years old, Cohen sexually abused Plaintiff by forcing him to spend hours in Cohen’s bedroom alone, forcing him to get into Cohen’s bed, forcing him to rub Cohen’s stomach and chest for the purpose of arousing him, forcing him to touch Cohen’s penis both inside and outside his clothes, and forcing him to masturbate Cohen until climax. The complaint further alleges that aside from the sexual abuse, Cohen psychologically abused Plaintiff by threatening to tell his parents about other minor infractions and threatening to have Plaintiff dismissed from the student exchange program, which would have caused Plaintiff to lose a year of his education. According to the complaint, unable to endure Cohen’s abuse any longer, Plaintiff made an outcry to representatives of his school. Shortly thereafter Cohen was arrested for the charge detailed above.

As we get closer to the impending three-day Yom Tov, I’m getting more afraid. I’m becoming increasingly terrified of coming back from Yom Yov to find that there has been a rash of suicides in the community committed by people who could not handle the isolation of a three-day Yom Tov alone. While this pandemic has been jarring for all of us and we’re all still caught up in the whiplash of a world changing ever more rapidly for the worse, I’m afraid that we’re forgetting about some of our most vulnerable community members.

A three-day Yom Tov is dangerous for people who live alone or are otherwise suffering with the isolation of social distancing and quarantine. It presents an actual, life-threatening risk to many singles, seniors, people living in abusive situations, and people who struggle with mental health. While there have been some efforts to figure out ways to account for those risks and mitigate them through various halachic accommodations, not enough is being done at the moment by our rabbis and community leaders.

On March 22 the RCA sent an email to its members with a brief directive from Rav Hershel Schachter regarding the use of electronic communication for vulnerable people on Yom Tov. The directive was very broad in its application, and was intended to give rabbis very wide latitude to issue heterim to members of their community who might be in danger due to isolation over a three-day Yom Tov. Because the directive was shared with me in confidence and was never meant for public dissemination I won’t quote its contents, but suffice it to say this directive was broad enough to address virtually every situation a rabbi might encounter dealing with this issue.

The basis of this directive was, of course, the idea that we have to take pikuach nefesh very seriously, that in such cases we must err on the side of saving lives, and that issues relating to mental health must be taken as seriously with regards to pikuach nefesh as physical dangers to human life.

When I found out about this directive, I immediately started contacting RCA member rabbis urging them to make some kind of public statement to their communities about the potential halachic considerations available for vulnerable people. Additionally, I wanted the RCA to make its own public statement about the issue, as well as establish a dedicated collection of rabbis who could serve as public consultants for questions related to the use of electronics on Yom Tov.

I wanted this for three reasons:

1. People might feel embarrassed to ask their rabbis questions about their mental health. In many communities there is still a stigma associated with mental health, and people may feel too embarrassed to reach out to their rabbis.
   
2. Not every rabbi is suited to this purpose. Not every rabbi is understanding of mental health challenges, or knowledgeable enough to render accurate piskei halacha on this subject. Not every rabbi fosters the kinds of relationship with their community members that would lend itself to that kind of discussion. Loathe as they may be to admit it, we need to account for the possibility that some rabbis may be unsympathetic, or inclined to incorrectly err on the side of observance, so to speak.
   
3. Not everybody has a rabbi. There are many otherwise observant Jews who don’t have any kind of relationship with a rabbi, whether that’s because distance prevents them from being part of a Jewish community, because they are young and haven’t yet found a rabbi of their own, or because they had a negative experience with their previous rabbi and haven’t yet found a replacement.

My efforts were met with mixed results. Some of the rabbis I spoke to did start immediately speaking about it with their community members. Some went a step further and pushed their colleagues to do the same. Some felt uncomfortable addressing the issue publicly at all, but after some coaxing did so anyway. Some haven’t responded.

Meantime, the issue picked up steam. On March 24 Five Sepharadi rabbis in Israel made international headlines within the Jewish press for issuing a ruling allowing members of their community to use Zoom for the sedarim under certain circumstances. Much of the coverage took the psak out of context, and immediately resulted in backlash by many prominent rabbis.

The next day, Rav Hershel Schachter issued the following public psak on the use of electronic communication on Yom Tov:

While the fact that he made such a psak publicly is certainly commendable, and the psak does acknowledge that mental health is just as important when discussing pikuach nefesh as physical health, this psak was made in the shadow of the controversy over the Sepharadi rabbi’s psak, and it shows. While it’s also understandable that a private guidance issued only to rabbis intended to give them the tools they need to then issue their own piskei halacha would be far broader than a psak intended for the general public to apply at their own discretion, the degree to which this psak is guarded and qualifies seems to be a result of the controversy.

The RCA included this psak on its website in a list of general halachos for Pesach during COVID-19.

And while that is significant and commendable, it’s still not enough. We are not doing enough. Our rabbis aren’t doing enough. Our communities are not doing enough.

Some rabbis have been proactive about sending emails or other communications to their community members directly addressing the concerns of vulnerable people in their communities. Some of these messages explicitly state that mental health dangers are considered pikuach nefesh equal to physical health dangers and encourage community members to reach out before Pesach to discuss options for coping with isolation over a three day Yom Tov. Some even went as far as to encourage community members to call them on Pesach itself if they feel they’re in distress and need someone to reach out to.

Other rabbis have opted instead to hold shiurim on the topic and address it during those, no doubt assuming that whatever gets discussed during the shiur will filter out to those who may have missed it. Recordings will likely be made available.

Still others have opted to address the issue very obliquely, asking community members to reach out to them if they have any concerns about their mental health during isolation over the three day Yom Tov, but giving no background or accompanying information.

Many other rabbis have said nothing to their communities about the issue, opting instead to wait until contacted by a community member concerned for their safety over Yom Tov, or are proactively but privately contacting community members they believe to be in potential danger over Yom Tov.

Overall there doesn’t seem to be much of a coherent response by the community at large to address this issue. There’s a psak here, a psak there, some are comprehensive, some are minimal, and some are clearly operating with a complete lack of understanding of the realities of the challenges faced by members of their community.

For example, in his psak Rav Schachter opened by saying that if an “individual has a psychological condition where physicians who know this patient have determined that there is a possibility that this person being alone over the course of Yom Tov would be in a situation of pikuach nefesh (possible suicide) if the individual was not able to com-municate or speak with family members, then the family members must reach out to this person over Yom Tov to speak on the phone or use the internet by leaving a connection open from before Yom Tov.”

The qualification requiring that the person have a diagnosed condition in order to avail themselves of electronic communication on Yom Tov is flatly ignorant of reality. Many people who struggle with suicidal ideation have never been diagnosed. Many have never even seen a therapist. Whether that’s due to stigma, internalized shame, lack of resources, lack of access, or any other reason, the reality of the danger is no less pressing. Furthermore, waiting until someone is experiencing active suicidal ideation before allowing them to avail themselves of electronic communication on Yom Tov is irresponsible.

Additionally, addressing suicide as the baseline for leniency is itself irresponsible. There are many other mental health concerns for which allowances may be issued. For example, exacerbation or relapse of eating disorders, self harm, exacerbation of severe anxiety disorders, severe depression, potential triggering of manic episodes or cycling in a person with Bipolar Disorder, potential triggering of psychosis, and so on. These are complicated issues that can’t be lumped into the category of diagnosed potential risk of suicide.

The issue of course when approaching this kind of public psak is how to balance the need to be inclusive of everyone who may need to avail themselves of the psak against a desire to not give an overly broad public psak which will either be misapplied or dismissed as too lenient. Rabbi Aryeh Klapper wrote a very detailed article laying out the various considerations that go into this process and how they might best be balanced against each other.

There are a number of problems I’m seeing as I examine more and more of the communications sent to different communities.

1. There is no coherent response to this problem. There is no organizational effort to centralize the response. It’s happening piecemeal and haphazardly.
   
2. The politics and meta-halacha of the issue is getting in the way of addressing the actual problem.
   
3. There is a fundamental lack of understanding about the realities of the mental health issues faced by many of the vulnerable people these piskei halacha are meant to address, and an apparent lack of will or desire to either become more educated or contact trusted experts on the subject.
   
4. There is a lack of self-awareness on the part of many rabbis of how their communities interact with them. This is especially true of many larger congregations and communities.
   
5. There is a fundamental lack of trust that laypeople, if actually given the details of the halacha, might apply it reasonably.
   
6. There is very little consideration being given to the infrastructure necessary to actually put these piskei halacha into effect.

To that end, I suggest the following:

1. There needs to be a group of rabbis and mental health professionals put together to address these concerns. These professionals should be available not only to consult on and put forth halachic policy, but also be available for consultation by those who may not have a rabbi or mental health professional of their own.
   
2. There should be a guidance issued to community rabbis to proactively discuss the issue with their community members. This guidance should be issued by the group mentioned above. This way there is uniformity in the message, and community rabbis who might feel unequipped to address this issue with their congregation have some materials to help them.
   
3. Community rabbis must have access to mental health professionals in the group to consult about the shailos they receive. Not every rabbi can be expected to understand the nuanced realities of mental health issues, and may need help issuing these piskei halacha.
   
4. If piskei halacha are going to be issued to people that they may use electronic communication on Yom Tov, there must be someone available to pick up on the other end when they reach out. A psak allowing electronic communication is meaningless if there isn’t anyone for them to communicate with. Community rabbis should either designate themselves as contact people or designate someone else as a contact person (ideally a mental health professional), and should make sure that members who receive an allowance for electronic communication have someone that they’re comfortable talking to when they’re vulnerable, whether that’s the appointed central contact person, a friend, or relative.
   
5. Because a rabbi, no matter how well connected to their congregants and no matter how large or small their community, can’t be certain what their congregants may be going through with regard to their mental health, they should make sure to include resources in their communications for crisis intervention services like the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, and encourage their community members to call those resources if they feel their lives are in danger.

We are living through a crisis the likes of which most people haven’t experienced in their lifetime, and that calls for for extraordinary measures. I urge laypeople reading this to contact their rabbis and impress upon them how seriously this must be taken, and urge them to discuss this openly with their communities.