Rabbinical conference on sexual abuse to open in Jerusalem

JPost

The Association of Communal Rabbis will convene a conference in Jerusalem on Sunday to deal with the ramifications of the allegations of severe sexual abuse against Rabbi Ezra Scheinberg from Safed within the religious community.

The conference at the Ganei Yerushalayim hotel will be attended by Chief Rabbis David Lau and Yitzhak Yosef, Efrat Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, director of ACR Rabbi Amichai Eliyahu and Rabbi Menachem Borshtein, director of the PUAH Institute for fertility, among others.

Scheinberg, a renowned national-religious rosh yeshiva from Safed, was indicted in July on 12 charges of sexual offenses including rape, sodomy and indecent assault. [...]

Alongside the 200 rabbinical figures at the conference, there will be addresses from police officers, child psychologists, and educational experts, while numerous organizations from the haredi and national-religious community will also be participating.

“After the scandal involving of ‘the rabbi of the North’ [Scheinberg] we have decided to raise this issue with the chief rabbis and organizations in the national-religious community due to the understanding that the rabbis are the most senior authorities and guides in these communities,” said Eliyahu.

“We need to create tools for dealing with similar cases and to build a mechanism for working with the legal authorities on issues of such sensitivity for families and the national-religious community.”