https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/understanding-the-marc-gafni-story-part-ii
In 2004, The Jewish Week
ran a damning exposé on Gafni, which included Mr. Gafni’s admission of
the incidents with the ninth-grader, as well as the news that Shlomo
Riskin had rescinded his rabbinic ordination. The article quoted Gafni
saying he now took precautions against future missteps: “‘I don’t work
with kids,’” Gafni said, “‘I don’t counsel men or women, and I don’t
meet alone with women.’”
https://www.lukeford.net/profiles/profiles/mordecai_gafni.htm
Judy told her story to Rabbi Shlomo Riskin. He chose to believe Winiarz.
Judy told one of her counselors in JPSY, Susan.
Susan brought Judy to Rabbi Blau who put out the word that Winiarz was dangerous.
I'm told by anti-Winiarz sources that an informal Beit Din was
convenened in New York about Marc and Judy. That Winiarz was told to
quit his job and move from New York to some unsuspecting community and
make a new life (that was how these things were handled until recently).
Marc: "This New York Beit Din story is a complete fabrication. The Judy encounter should've been dealt with and healed immediately. I kept running JPSY for a couple of years [after the Judy controversy]."
Rabbi Yosef Blau's wife Rivkah worked for R. Shlomo Riskin in the 1970s and early 1980s (she ran his girls' high school). She frequently found it distressing and burned out twice. She and her husband appeared to have a tense relationship with R. Riskin (though they've all since buried the hatchet, and R. Blau has a son who works for R. Riskin).
Marc Winiarz was R. Riskin's poster boy.
R. Riskin was trying to raise money to show that he could produce a new generation of rabbis. The first (and only in the United States?) guy R. Riskin ordained was Winiarz.
Yeshiva University's backbenchers were furious at R. Riskin for starting his own Hebrew high school (Ohr Torah). R. Riskin was talking about starting his own ordination program up the road from YU. R. Riskin was taking funding that used to go to YU. The guy who funded Ohr Torah was Max Stern of Stern College (the women's branch of YU) fame.
Rabbi Blau and Marc Winiarz had a confrontation in 1985 in a hallway on the third or fourth floor of YU.
According to sources, the confrontation went like this:
Marc. "Rabbi Blau, what are you doing? Are you crazy? Why haven't you come to talk to me to heal this thing? You're spreading stories that are not true."
Rabbi Blau says: "I'm going to get you."
Marc responds: "Why don't you first take care of problems in your own home before you start throwing stones at other people?"
I hear that Rabbi Blau then threw a punch at Marc and said, "I'll bring you down."
On Oct. 12, 2004, R. Blau told me: "At one point, Mordechai came into my office and told me he'd get my wife. I was stern with him. He was threatening."
In July 2008, I ask Marc about all this. He replies: "This was a long time ago. I wish the Blaus well. I no longer live in their world. Perhaps one day in the future we will all be able to sit down like human beings and heal this."
In early 1986, Winiarz finished his term at JPSY.
Marc: "I ended JPSY for a simple reason. A lot of people who do youth work does it between 18 and 26 and then you burn out."
Luke: "Weren't you exiled to Boca? Wasn't there a Beit Din convened?"
Marc: "It never happened."
Luke: "So you went to Boca voluntarily?"
Marc: "Of course.
"It's a natural transition. I went to Rabbi Kenny Hain, who was head of communal services at YU. I was ready to take a pulpit. He suggested Boca Raton."
The rabbi in Boca Raton before Winiarz was Mark Dratch, Rabbi Norman Lamm's son-in-law.
The congregation (Boca Raton Community Synagogue) had about 20 families. They'd been brutal to R. Dratch. One guy was particularly vicious -- attorney Steve Marcus who was murdered in a gay bar ten years later.
Rabbi Lamm came down to help his son-in-law. When he got up to speak, four people turned their chairs to face the wall.
Nobody wanted to take the pulpit that R. Lamm had ostracized.
Winiarz moved to Boca Raton around 1986. He did a great job in
outreach. He was charismatic. The size of the congregation tripled.
Marc ruffled feathers. Before the high holidays, he took out full page ads in the local Jewish newspaper that said, 'Are you bored with impersonal and monotonous services? Come join Rabbi Marc.'
"The other rabbis in town were furious with me," says Marc, "because they felt I was describing their congregation, which of course I was."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanukkah_gelt
Rabbi A. P. Bloch has written that
"The tradition of giving money (Chanukah gelt) to children is of long standing. The custom had its origin in the 17th-century practice of Polish Jewry to give money to their small children for distribution to their teachers. In time, as children demanded their due, money was also given to children to keep for themselves. Teenage boys soon came in for their share. According to Magen Avraham (18th century), it was the custom for poor yeshiva students to visit homes of Jewish benefactors who dispensed Chanukah money (Orach Chaim 670). The rabbis approved of the custom of giving money on Chanukah because it publicized the story of the miracle of the oil."[1]
https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/baalei-teshuvah
In the second half of the 20th century, the words ba'alei teshuvah took on new significance. Beginning in the 1960s in the U.S., the rise of the counterculture in general American society together with the search for new meaning and spirituality led an increasing number of college-age Jews to explore Jewish observance, many for the first time. For most of these young Jews, the exploration led them to Orthodoxy, of one form or another.
1 heard from Rabbi Yoseif Kahaneman, the late Ponevezher Rav 7"~n, that in the course of the Hitler holocaust a million pure souls of innocent Jewish children,cheder children, were lost. Since then, their souls hover in the world, trying to find bodies into which they can enter in order to continue their interrupted lives. Thus pure Jewish souls are transfigured in the chozrim biteshuva of our days.
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-baal-teshuva-movement/
BTW one of the saddest respondents I encountered was Rav Ephraim Buchwald, who was a leader at YU’s TLS and then founded and led National Jewish Outreach Professionals. I know, like and respect him very much. This is what he wrote to me:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baal_teshuva_movement
A baal teshuva movement has emerged with a significant number of Jews from non-traditional homes returning to the observance of grandparents and great grandparents. In fact one of the challenges facing modern Orthodoxy is that many of these returnees are attracted to a European Orthodoxy.[6]
https://www.thelehrhaus.com/commentary/is-modern-orthodox-kiruv-possible/
In theory, the Modern Orthodox community is in the best possible situation to take on this challenge. No other branch of Judaism is so firmly rooted in Torah and mitzvot while simultaneously being full participants in contemporary culture. Many Jews who are not yet observant would likely be able to strongly connect to Modern Orthodox Judaism and find an ideological home within the Modern Orthodox community if such an option were to be presented properly.
In spite of this, much of the kiruv (roughly translated as “outreach”) world is dominated by those representing various shades of a more right-wing Orthodox Judaism, including organizations such as Chabad,[4] Aish HaTorah, Chazaq, Olami, and more.[5]
One of the biggest issues that prevents Modern Orthodox kiruv from being successful is that Modern Orthodoxy tends to be perceived as unattractive to those who are searching for a legitimate religious outlet. One need only look at the traction of Eitan Gross’s now infamous article in which he argues that the Modern Orthodox world is full of “glaring hypocrisy and internal contradiction.”[7] Similarly, Noah Feldman of Harvard Law (who himself left the Modern Orthodox community), assessed the following:
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/221450
A number of leading rabbinical figures in the Orthodox world have issued a stern rebuke of one of the most prominent ‘kiruv’ (outreach) rabbis in the United States.
Sixteen rabbis penned a letter, publicized on Wednesday, rejecting the behavior and comments of Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi, calling his teaching methods “superficial”, “deceptive”, and “dangerous”.
“As rabbonim and mechanchim (teachers), we are greatly concerned about the popularity in some circles of a ‘kiruv’ approach that does not bring honor to the Torah…but on the contrary, creates considerable chilul Hashem (desecration of God’s name),” the statement reads.
Among others, the 16 signatories to the letter include Rabbi Gedalia Dov Schwartz, head of the Beis Din of American and the Chicago Rabbinical Council; the Bostoner Rebbe, Rabbi Mayer Alter Horowitz; Rabbi Yitzchok Alderstein, editor of Cross Currents; Rabbi Avi Shafran, a senior member of Agudath Israel of America; Rabbi Shalom Baum, President of the Rabbinical Council of America; Yeshiva University Rosh Yeshiva Rabbi Daniel Feldman; Rabbi Shaya Karlinsky, Rosh Yeshiva of Darche Noam in Jerusalem; and Rabbi Joseph Dweck, Senior Rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish communities in the UK.
https://mishpacha.com/out-to-save-the-world/
Warmly eulogized by the entire Torah world after his passing, in his lifetime he was both ridiculed as “Noach the meshugener” and subject to sharp criticism. Despite being the seminal figure in the modern baal teshuvah movement, he was rarely invited to address the general chareidi public, and a major rosh yeshivah once took to the pages of the Jewish Observer to attack the “religion of kiruv.”
No one who had such a vast list of things he wished to change could have failed to arouse critics. The Novominsker Rebbe, Rav Yaakov Perlow, in his eulogy for Rav Noach — a boyhood friend — hinted at the source of some of that opposition: “Often, those who burn with passion to right every wrong make others nervous.” The Rebbe confessed that in later years he would often cross to the other side of the street when he saw Rav Noach coming to avoid being confronted with questions about what he was doing to solve the problems of Klal Yisrael.
