Seminary Scandal The Fantastical RICO by Rav M. Tzadok

I've been torn on how I want to address this subject, simply because the subject matter is so complex, and there are so many facts that I simply do not know at this time, such as whether the sexual acts were consensual or not. However, I think that we can safely say that consensual or not Meisel's actions were deplorable. His actions have shamed himself and the entire Torah world. For that he most definitely should be held accountable. He committed and awful Chilul HaShem and and perhaps even permanently destroyed the connection of these young women with Judaism, the very inverse of the reason that they came to the Israel to learn in the first place.

One cannot say that the RICO claim is not without certain merits. Surely concerned parents, especially those who hold the Chicago Beit Din as their Rabbanim, should be allowed to withdraw their daughters from the seminary without financial penalty. Their concerns are not without merit and they are simply following the direction of their Rabbanim, something that should be honored by Orthodox Jewish institutions. That the parents have not been able to regain their deposits is a profound shame and a black mark upon Judaism.

However, two wrongs do not make a right. The Shulhan Arukh writes regarding those that go to secular court for their monetary disputes, "It is forbidden to go to judgement before non-Jewish judges and their courts, even if they rule like the laws of Israel, and even if both parties want to bring their case before them it is forbidden, and every one who comes to judgement before them is a rasha , a blasphemer, and has raised his hand against the Torah and Moshe Rabbeinu A"H." While the halakha does give certain exceptions to this, it is clear at this point that none prerequisites for those have been met in order to bring a lawsuit of this magnitude.

Further RICO suit constitutes at its essence an essential motzei shem ra. RICO requires that there was a criminal enterprise meaning that, the defendants either actively and knowingly with criminal intent took part in illegal activities or conspired to do so. While Meisels may have intentionally used the seminaries under his control to gain wealth and feed his own sexual appetites, I boggles the mind that other individuals, much less that Israeli Beit DIn, conspired with him to both feed his sexual appetites as well as defraud these young women, or their parents of their money.

Paragraphs 23 through 73 alleged that these seminaries were not in fact seminaries, but rather used Jewish education as a front for human sex trafficking. Further that once this came to light an Israeli Beit Din, which according to the 1953 Law Regarding Jurisdiction of Rabbinical Courts, has the same status and same legal responsibilities as a non Rabbinic Court in Israel, joined the conspiracy to commit fraud and human sex trafficking. There really is no substantive difference between accusing any secular court of engaging in fraud, racketeering and human sex trafficking, and blaming an Israeli Beit Din of the same.

Not only is this RICO claim written like bad fiction, it is simply bad fiction. Before guilt can be determined in US law three aspects of a crime must be firmly established, motive, means and opportunity. Certainly all three can be seen with Meisels himself. However, what motive did the teachers, the staff, and the Israeli Beit DIn have? Further since this is a RICO case, there also has to be shown actual criminal intent. What we are being asked to believe is that such a large group of people, knowingly and willingly worked to solely benefit a single individual both monetarily and lustfully, while pretending to go through the motions of running a sham Seminary, where the girls were not taught Torah but groomed for their night with Meisels. The absurdity of it simply baffles the mind. I have to wonder if they didn't pick their lawyer from a late night infomercial.

They are asking us to believe that the entire staff of four seminaries, and a legal organ of the State of Israel, knowingly and willingly perpetuated a fraud for a number of years simply for the financial gain and sexual gratification of a single individual. They claim that all of these folks are deviants and evildoers to such an extent that they would do such a thing. Why? Because they want their deposit back so that they can send their daughters to a different seminary!!!

Certainly, as the Beis Yaakov system has its own managers and overseers that monitor what goes on in any school that bears their name in Israel they too are going to be dragged into this. So the women and Rabbanim of the B"Y system then also have to have been knowingly and willfully perpetuating this scheme of fraud and human sex trafficking, while risking a nation wide institution that they have spent their professional lives painstakingly building. Again I have to ask where is the motive?

This RICO case is start to finish an antisemite's dream come true. It belongs more on the pages of Stormfront then it does in the halls of Justice in the United States. There simply is no way that so many individuals and institutions and be so horribly maligned as this necessitates without Judaism as a whole being tarred and feathered. Yes there is a things such as spiritual abuse, it happens, it is horrible, and it needs to be dealt with. Abraham Lincoln once wrote in a latter to Albert G. Hodges, "By general law life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life, but a life is never wisely given to save a limb." I must ask, is the money, however hard earned, however carefully saved, so important that reputable institutions, some of which that have been at the forefront of the fight against child sexual abuse(which this case is not, by the way. An 18yr old woman is either a consenting adult or the victim of a rape), should be destroyed in order that it might be regained?

These allegations smack of the flights of fancy that paraded themselves around as legitimate lawsuits and criminal complaints in the 1980's, when Satanic Ritual Abuse was taking place in a daycare near you. It was not until a full decade after that damage had been done that the public awoke as if from a dream and was horrified at the destruction of lives, and institutions it had allowed. There the blood thirst for the guilty, allowed even otherwise rational prosecutors, one of whom would eventually become the 78th Attorney General of the United States, to overlook the crucial necessity of a motive in determining guilt. We cannot allow that to happen here.

We can only hope that the plaintiffs will rethink their current course of action and rectify the horrible mistake that they are now making. While their various grievances may be justified, their course of action is not.

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הרב מיכאל צדוק אלכהן