Rabbi Daniel Eidensohn, the owner of this Daas Torah blog, has been extraordinarily gracious to me and many others over the years. He has published numerous of my guest posts and given me an opportunity to comment virtually without restraint.
Yet, this post may not make the cut. It goes beyond provocative and accusatory and crosses the line, perhaps, into fundamentally questioning the viability of the Yeshiva system as it stands today in America.
Through this blog I reluctantly learned of the extent of molestation that goes on in Yeshivas and Seminaries. To be sure, others guided me also in my attempt to untangle this most difficult topic. Rabbi Yehuda Levin has brought up this issue. Rabbi Dovid Eidensohn introduced me to this blog and shared information he has gathered from his sources.
There are way too many cases to make a complete list of incidents that led me to where I am today in my having a vantage point to examine the underbelly of the beast. Some cases stand out more than others. Rabbi Dovid Eidensohn told me of a case, if I recall correctly, of a boy in a Yeshiva who complained of homosexual activity between some students in his dorm, and was subsequently expelled for pushing the matter.
The incident of the many allegations against a founder of girls' seminaries in Eretz Yisrael stands out.
And of course there is the ongoing technical molestation of a woman by her own husband who it turns out is not her husband, a cruelty inflicted on her by a conspiracy of her Rabbis.
The pattern of these and other documented cases on this blog and other blogs, both recent cases and cases going back decades, is that complainants, people who protest against molestation, are labeled "troublemakers".
I do not include links to webpages because because I cannot vouch for their veracity nor their adherence to Halachic standards of speech (including allegations against those who are not able to respond). There are webpages that illustrate the points I've made but I will leave it the reader to use thir discretion in independently researching the matter.
The above is a lead-in to the continuing saga of a case that has pushed me over the edge.
There is an abundance of evidence that Rabbi Daniel Greer is a danger to the community. He has been accused of molesting students. He has invoked the Fifth Amendment in court proceedings regarding his sexual activity with male Jewish teenagers. To plead the Fifth is to exercise the right not to be compelled to testify in a way that incriminates oneself.
The Jewish community would seem justified in acting to protect people from Rabbi Daniel Greer. Yet, when Rabbi Greer wants to make a Minyan, he has been able to get young men from a nearby town to Daven with him. Only when the young men get there, it seems to be, do they learn that he is an alleged molester, as locals warn them upon their arrival.
By happenstance, I was discussing this case with someone who had his phone in speaker mode, and someone with him said he had been with a group that indeed was lured to make a Minyan and that he only learned on his arrival why apparently no one in the city would Daven with Rabbi Greer.
This made the case personal. Why hasn't there been a hue and cry against Rabbi Daniel Greer? Why is this blog and a few others online seemingly the only place to raise the alarm? Why aren't there better mechanisms to stop molestastion?
The answer is coming into sharp focus for me. It took me long enough.
Within what we call the Yeshivish, Chareidi, Litvish, whatever term you prefer, world, the widespread and appalling lack of truly effective safeguards against molestation is not the result of pathetic passiveness. I speak as an outside observer. Maybe I've missed something. I'm willing to admit that. Prove me wrong and I will be much obliged. Certainly my intent is not to overgeneralize. Some places may have have rules that are the means to eradicate degeneracy in their midst.
I'm beginning to find too much of a pattern, though, and I've come to believe it's a strategy. The prevailing conscious attitude is that nothing must be done to give the impression that Torah observant families and their communities are less than perfect. When something comes up to shake this illusion, the approach is to do all possible to ignore it, unless that becomes impossible, such as when it became abundantly evident a Kosher store had been selling the public Treif chickens.
I think this overarching principle to preserve appearances is perhaps an alternative meaning to the term Sinas Chinom, baseless hatred. The word "Chinom", "gratuitous, for no reason" (according to the Jastrow Dictionary), as in "freely given hatred", is related to "Chain", "grace", the quality of being "likeable".
Sinas Chinom, responsible for so much of our troubles in this last Galus, could thus be though of as "likeable hatred" as well as "baseless hatred": exhibiting groundless hatred to some in order to be liked by others. That's a stretch, and may violate laws of grammar, but aptly describes the willingness to sacrifice all, including integrity and self-preservation, to satisfy the drive to appear perfect. "If hating fellow Jews, in this case being quiet as boys unknowingly end up associating with a know molester, is what it takes to get the world to buy that our community is wonderful, so be it."
So, that is why Rabbi Greer is shunned but not ostracized totally. It just "wouldn't be nice" to do that to him, as well as "not nice to publicize the idea among students that Jews can be molesters." Well, sometimes being nice is actually nasty. If this is what Yeshivas and Seminaries have become, places where the occasional student is sacrificed on the altar of perfection, maybe it's time to start over.
Instead of treating students nastily in the service of conformity to some nebulous standard of perfection, let's try sacrificing conformity in the service of being nice to students.
But will that happen without outside coercion? Obedience to parents and teachers has become the idol to worship, never to be questioned nor veered away from. Even if the teacher is requiring a student to be their sex slave.
