Child abuse - Mondrowitz ABC News

ABC News reports:

Oct. 11 2006

Retired New York Police Department Det. Pat Kehoe still remembers a phone call she got more than 20 years ago, from a person making allegations that a rabbi was sexually abusing children in his neighborhood.

"I never received a call like that in my whole career in the New York City Police Department. Never," Kehoe told Cynthia McFadden in a recent interview.

"I'll never forget it because unfortunately it was my birthday, November 21 1984. I was working in the Brooklyn Sex Crimes squad and I received an anonymous call from a male who started to say that there was a rabbi and gave the name and he was abusing people on this block," she said.

Rabbi Avrohom Mondrowitz, as he called himself, lived on a tree-lined block in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn. Kehoe and her partner, Sal Catafulmo, went out to the neighborhood where Italians and Hasidic Jews lived side-by-side.

At one of the first addresses they tried, she says a resident told her "Everyone knows Rabbi Mondrowitz. He's good to all our children. He buys them bicycles and takes them away on weekends and things."

That might sound like a recommendation, but not to Kehoe. "With that information I got very scared," she said. Kehoe's background in an NYPD pedophilia squad taught her to recognize the signs of pedophilia."Pedophiles have a pattern with children to get their confidence and send their so-called love, you might say, and buy them things," she said. What she heard from the children themselves only confirmed her gut feelings.

"We brought them in without their parents," Kehoe said. "They started to tell us, 'The rabbi is our friend. He takes us away,' and things like that. As the questions became more difficult for the children -- 'Did anything ever happen? Did anything sexual ever happen? Are you aware of it happening to anyone else while you were there?' -- they all broke down and cried, each one separately."[...]

Supreme Court refuses to extradite Mondrowitz

YNET

The Supreme Court determined Thursday that Abraham Mondrowitz, who is accused of committing severe sex crimes against minors in the US up to 25 years ago, will not be extradited.

Mondrowitz, a psychologist by trade, resided in the US until 1984, when he immigrated to Israel. A few months after his arrival he was indicted in his home country on charges of sexual abuse of minors.

Mondrowitz :Who protected the monster from deportation?

Times of Israel   There is a monster in Jerusalem as well. No one has ever laid a hand on him either. But this one is definitely real. His name is Avroham Mondrowitz.

Mondowitz is a paedophile who molested up to 300 boys in Brooklyn in a mainly ultra-Orthodox section of the city — we’ll never know the real number of victims — and then skipped out to Israel in 1985 where he twice fended off efforts to send him back to face justice. Mondowitz, who presents himself as an ordained rabbi and Columbia-trained psychologist, and is neither, lives free as a bird in the neighborhood of Nachlaot in central Jerusalem.

The US twice sought his extradition from Israel, in 1986 and again in 2008. The first time the two states discovered incredibly that their extradition treaty covered only sexual abuse crimes against females and not males. The second time they worked with a revised treaty. A lower court ruled for the extradition. The Supreme Court nixed that saying that Israel had 20 years to get this guy hiding in plain sight and to come along after such an extraordinary period of time violates his civil rights. You can’t make this stuff up.

He may gone off the radar in Israel but they have not forgotten Mondrowitz in New York. Just last month the Post ran still another article on how the man they call “New York’s most notorious child molester … got away with it.”

Ultra-orthodox rabbis are renown for spending their entire lives memorizing a multitude of precepts produced by a multitude of sages down their ages and then applying them to every situation in their waking lives so that every minute of every day they will always be doing the right thing. But when it comes to paedophiles in their community somewhere along the line they reached outside the box for their guiding precept. They adopted it from Mizaru, Kikazaru, and Iwazaru. These are Japanese monkeys. Their names mean see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. In an amazing triumph for the ecumenical movement it turns out that Catholic prelates adopted the exact same precept in regard to paedophiles among the ministers of their faith. Some like the Monsignor William Lynn of Philadelphia, who got up to six years for “child endangerment,” are now in prison. The judge convicted him of shielding, protecting and aiding “monsters in clerical garb.” Mondrowitz got help along the way too up to and including illegal acts of obstruction of justice but we’ll never learn from whom. The Catholics operate in a strict hierarchical system. There but for the grace of decentralization go our child endangerers. [...]

He used the boys sent to him as sex toys, In ultra-Orthodox culture members of the flock are expected to choose a rabbi. When they need guidance in any matter not excluding their personal lives, they seek it from their rabbi. What he tells them is binding. From empirical evidence it appears that all the rabbis on the subject of paedophilia imposed “omerta,” an Italian word meaning a code of silence. No one reported Mondrowitz to the authorities. Then he got careless. He lived in a mixed neighborhood. Mondrowitz developed an appetite for boys of Italian extraction. Their folks were not bound to any omerta. Parents of four boys went to the police. Two cops came round to arrest Mondrowitz. They were too late. He was already en route to Canada and from there headed to the Promised Land. [...]

Unmolested

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/unmolested

Most people have never heard the story of Avrohom Mondrowitz, which has received only a smattering of headlines in the Jewish media. A charismatic and eloquent member of the Ger Hasidic sect of ultra-Orthodox Jews, the 63-year-old claimed to be both a rabbi and a Columbia-trained psychologist. Though he was neither, for years he ran a psychology practice out of his basement, as well as a school for troubled youth. He is also alleged to be one of the worst sexual predators in Brooklyn history.

 

Lawsuit Revives Victims’ Hopes That Alleged Abuser Will Face Justice

https://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/lawsuit-revives-victims-hopes-that-alleged-abuser-faces-justice/

The suit alleges that during their mandated counseling session, Mondrowitz — who at the time had a popular radio show and was revered by many within the charedi world as a talented psychologist despite having faked his credentials — molested Zuckerman. After the incident Zuckerman says Mondrowitz took him to a bookstore and bought him an expensive set of young adult books he wanted, written by the 19th-century German rabbi and author, Marcus Lehmann.

The teacher took him to the office of the school’s spiritual supervisor, Avrohom Leizerowitz, who, Zuckerman claims, “berated him for his ‘dirty mind’ and instructed him that he would be required to receive counseling” from the very man in the basement, Avrohom Mondrowitz.

(In 2006 Leizerowitz fled to Israel after allegations surfaced that he had molested boys. A post on the website of the now-defunct Awareness Center reported that a civil suit was filed against him alleging that he improperly touched a boy during a one-on-one help session in his office.)

The complaint, filed Monday in Brooklyn Supreme Court, takes advantage of a law passed last year allowing victims of childhood sexual abuse a limited window of time in which to pursue abuse claims even if the statute of limitations has run out. Zuckerman also asserts in the complaint that after he reported the abuse to Leizerowitz he was expelled from the yeshiva, which is affiliated with the Ger chasidic sect; the expulsion came, he told The Jewish Week, via a letter written to his parents explaining that he “didn’t fit the school and they should find another school.”

Longitudinal evaluation and decline of antibody responses in SARS-CoV-2 infection

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.09.20148429v1

 This article is a preprint and has not been certified by peer review [what does this mean?]. It reports new medical research that has yet to be evaluated and so should not be used to guide clinical practice.

Antibody (Ab) responses to SARS-CoV-2 can be detected in most infected individuals 10-15 days following the onset of COVID-19 symptoms. However, due to the recent emergence of this virus in the human population it is not yet known how long these Ab responses will be maintained or whether they will provide protection from re-infection. Using sequential serum samples collected up to 94 days post onset of symptoms (POS) from 65 RT-qPCR confirmed SARS-CoV-2-infected individuals, we show seroconversion in >95% of cases and neutralizing antibody (nAb) responses when sampled beyond 8 days POS. We demonstrate that the magnitude of the nAb response is dependent upon the disease severity, but this does not affect the kinetics of the nAb response. Declining nAb titres were observed during the follow up period. Whilst some individuals with high peak ID₅₀ (>10,000) maintained titres >1,000 at >60 days POS, some with lower peak ID₅₀ had titres approaching baseline within the follow up period. A similar decline in nAb titres was also observed in a cohort of seropositive healthcare workers from Guy′s and St Thomas′ Hospitals. We suggest that this transient nAb response is a feature shared by both a SARS-CoV-2 infection that causes low disease severity and the circulating seasonal coronaviruses that are associated with common colds. This study has important implications when considering widespread serological testing, Ab protection against re-infection with SARS-CoV-2 and the durability of vaccine protection.

 

Immunity to Covid-19 could be lost in months, UK study suggests

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/12/immunity-to-covid-19-could-be-lost-in-months-uk-study-suggests

People who have recovered from Covid-19 may lose their immunity to the disease within months, according to research suggesting the virus could reinfect people year after year, like common colds.

In the first longitudinal study of its kind, scientists analysed the immune response of more than 90 patients and healthcare workers at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS foundation trust and found levels of antibodies that can destroy the virus peaked about three weeks after the onset of symptoms then swiftly declined.

Blood tests revealed that while 60% of people marshalled a “potent” antibody response at the height of their battle with the virus, only 17% retained the same potency three months later. Antibody levels fell as much as 23-fold over the period. In some cases, they became undetectable.

“People are producing a reasonable antibody response to the virus, but it’s waning over a short period of time and depending on how high your peak is, that determines how long the antibodies are staying around,” said Dr Katie Doores, lead author on the study at King’s College London

Trump on private border wall segment: ‘It was only done to make me look bad’

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/12/trump-border-wall-make-me-look-bad-357706

Saying it was done to embarrass him, President Donald Trump on Sunday said a reportedly defective section of his new border wall should not have been built by a private company.

ProPublica and the Texas Tribune reported Thursday that a segment of the wall along the Texas-Mexico border was showing dangerous “signs of erosion“ only months after being completed. The section was constructed by Fisher Industries of North Dakota, whose owner called the design a “Lamborghini.” It cost $42 million.

 

Health Ministry chief: 2,100 cases in just over 36 hours

https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-health-ministry-chief-2100-cases-in-just-over-36-hours-1001335671#utm_source=RSS

Prof. Hezi Levi feels people do not understand the extent to which Covid-19 is spreading in Israel.

Ministry of Health director general Prof. Hezi Levi has been trying to explain the severity of the growing spread of Covid-19 in Israel. "Yesterday there were 1,221 new people who tested positive and today since midnight there has been 900 more. There are more than 40,000 confirmed cases in Israel and divided by age 25% are under 18 and 8% over 65. There are currently 525 people hospitalized, of whom more than 100 are seriously ill and 54 people are on ventilators. 354 people have died. The infection rate is growing and rising, and the number of daily tests we are conducting is increasing. We are performing about 28,000 of which about 6% are positive."

Trump spreads conspiracy from ex-game show host Chuck Woolery

Acosta to McEnany: Why not have the guts to trash Fauci with your own names?

How Pandemics Wreak Havoc—and Open Minds

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/20/how-pandemics-wreak-havoc-and-open-minds

The plague marked the end of the Middle Ages and the start of a great cultural renewal. Could the coronavirus, for all its destruction, offer a similar opportunity for radical change?

 

1 – The Mitzvah of Settling the Land of Israel

https://ph.yhb.org.il/en/05-04-01/

The reason the Rambam does not include this mitzvah in his count of the 613 is that it is beyond the regular “value” of mitzvot; therefore, it is not included in their detailed enumeration. This coincides with the rules the Rambam lays down at the beginning of Sefer HaMitzvot, stating it is inappropriate to reckon commandments that encompass the entire Torah, as he writes in Mitzvah #153 [that settling the Land of Israel is all-inclusive]. Besides which, it is implausible to say that the mitzvah of Yishuv HaAretz is only rabbinically ordained today [and that that is why the Rambam leaves it out of the count]. After all, Chazal’s statement that settling the Land is equal to all the mitzvot of the Torah was made after the destruction of the Second Temple. Now, it is unlikely that they would say such a thing about a rabbinic mitzvah. Moreover, it is improbable that the Rabbis would dismantle a family (see above regarding divorce), and allow one to violate a shevut, merely for the sake of a rabbinic mitzvah (see Rabbi Zisberg’s Nachalat Ya’akov, Vol. 1, pp. 201-249).

Public Health And Teaching Experts Weigh In On Plans To Safely Reopen Schools | MSNBC