Rabbi Shafran's recent article [below] - The Evil Eleventh - is a highly offensive and insensitive (or perhaps mean spirited) attempt at defending the Orthodox Jewish community against charges of child abuse. Rabbi Shafran is a highly intelligent and dedicated polemicist who on occasion misspeaks. An example of this is his infamous article in which he said that the loathsome Madoff who ruined many people in a $50 billion swindle was superior to the hero of the Hudson who saved many lives with his skillful landing of an airplane on the Hudson river. Why is Madoff better according to Rabbi Shafran? Because he mentioned G-d. He retracted the article, but didn't acknowledge that he had made a serious mistake, when he discovered no one could fathom his "brilliant" insight.
In his article, Rabbi Shafran seems to feel that there is a conspiracy to assert that child abuse is a more serious problem in the Orthodox community than in the rest of the world. In particular he focuses on two writers who have dealt with the topic of abuse in the Orthodox community - Robert Kolker of NY Magazine and Hella Winston of the Jewish Week. While he can claim that these two are outsiders - he conveniently ignores others within the community who have been saying the same thing. One of them is Rabbi Yakov Horowitz - who runs the Aguda approved Project Y.E.S. - and is a highly respected defender of abuse victims. He addresses Rabbi Shafran's points and rejects them
http://haemtza.blogspot.co.il/2012/06/rabbi-yakov-horowitz-responds.html.
Click here for Robert Kolker's response to R Shafran
Furthermore he claims that it can't be because of the positive Torah values and fear of G-d. That is a defense which can be rejected by anyone who has followed cases such as Mondrowitz or Weingarten. These cases weren't exceptions but unfortunately follow a fairly common patter of denial and cover ups. Rabbi Shafran wrote:
That is, put bluntly, an unmitigated insult to Judaism. Jewish life
holds high the ideals of family, community, compassion for others,
control of anger and passions, and ethical behavior. There will always
be seemingly observant individuals who are hypocritical, or who may
sadly fail the test of self-control, even with horrendous impacts on the
lives of others.
It is clear to all those who have dealt with this topic within the Orthodox community - that the above values have been and are displaced when it comes to concerns for mesira, lashon harah, chillul haShem, financial loss, shidduchim etc etc etc. These are things which are obvious and well documented for years. I myself spoke with Doron Aggassi the director of Rav Yehuda Silman's abuse program in Bnei Brak. Rav Silman is a highly respect posek and member of Rav Nissan Karelitz's beis din. Mr. Aggassi noted that the Orthodox community is paradise for abusers. 1) chareidi children don't know anything about sex and don't understand what is being done to them and don't know how to report it 2) there is a code of silence not to report abuse 3) victim's and their families are especially unlikely to report abuse.
As I have noted in my books on abuse - Rav Sternbuch told me he is upset about the refusal within our community of rabbis and school officials not even wanting to listen to allegations of abuse. In fact he published a teshuva on the subject. He is upset by the lack of concern for the victims - even telling me that those there is no justification in halacha for not protecting kids by calling the police - because of fear of financial harm to the yeshivos! He told me such an attitude is an American rationale.
In fact at a time when significant progress is being made in the Orthodox community regarding abuse - it bizarre (or perhaps sinister) that Rabbi Shafran should spout this nonsense which has been rejected by the leaders of our community for at least 5 years. The best justification I could come up for this rubbish is that Rabbi Shafran simply wanted to use the BBC scandal to make Orthodox Jews look better than the goyim. Unfortunately he didn't succeed because he didn't bother getting acquainted with the reality of abuse in our community.
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Is child abuse “more common in the Orthodox Jewish community than it is elsewhere? There are no reliable statistics … but there’s reason to believe the answer to that question might be yes.”
Those words, sandwiching an important admission between a sinister question and an unfounded speculation, were written back in 2006 by Robert Kolker in New York magazine.
Mr. Kolker’s “reason to believe” was based on speculation by the New York Jewish Week’s Hella Winston, who has since established herself as someone who views the Orthodox community through heavily jaundiced eyes.
Our hearts must ache with the anguish of victims of abuse, especially children. And it’s natural for people who have met survivors of terrible things to feel deeply for them, and angry at their abusers. But extrapolating from the harrowing accounts of carefully sought-out victims that abuse, which sadly exists in the Orthodox community as it does in all communities, is somehow emblematic of Orthodox life is like visiting Sloan Kettering and concluding that there is a national cancer epidemic raging.
The New York writer went on to offer an even more offensive, even less grounded, conjecture, protectively qualified by the preface “There are some who believe…” What the safely unnamed “some” believe is that “repression in the ultra-Orthodox community”—namely, dedication to Jewish law and custom—“can foster abuse” [emphasis mine].
That is, put bluntly, an unmitigated insult to Judaism. Jewish life holds high the ideals of family, community, compassion for others, control of anger and passions, and ethical behavior. There will always be seemingly observant individuals who are hypocritical, or who may sadly fail the test of self-control, even with horrendous impacts on the lives of others. But does the existence of corrupt police and unethical doctors indict the professions of law enforcement or medicine?
If any belief system enables immoral and unethical behavior, it is not Judaism but its polar opposite, the conviction that no higher authority exists. While atheists may live upstanding lives, it should be self-evident that denial of a Higher Power and divine laws for mankind leaves a human being with no authority but himself, and no compelling reason—other than getting caught—to shun bad behavior.
These thoughts come to mind in the wake of a recent highly-publicized abuse scandal in England. One Jimmy Savile, a famous entertainment figure who died last year, was posthumously exposed as a serial abuser of children, including patients in hospitals he visited in the course of charitable fundraising work.
The British National Health Service, police, and the BBC all stand accused of turning a blind eye to the man’s crimes—which were the subject of a BBC broadcast that the network canceled.
Astoundingly, in Mr. Savile’s 1976 autobiography, he did not shy from describing some of his abusive behavior, which clearly crossed the moral and legal line, bragging that had “not been found out.”
“Which, after all,” he added, in an attempt at humor, “is the 11th commandment, is it not?”
It was a poignant choice of words. Because those who recognize the import of the Ten Commandments respect them as G-d-given, immutable, and binding. The entertainer’s imaginary Eleventh is the antithesis of those adjectives. It is the credo of someone who feels he is not ultimately answerable to any being, or Being. And it provides him license to do whatever he finds pleasurable or amusing, no matter the toll on others, or on his own soul.
No, Mr. Kolker and your “some who believe,” a religious Jew is imbued with consciousness that, as Rabi Yehudah Hanasi expressed in Massechta Avos (2:1): “An eye sees and an ear hears, and all of your actions are in the record written.”
That truth, though, can be occasionally forgotten even by us non-atheists. That is the message of the initially puzzling blessing Rabi Yochanan ben Zakkai offered his students as he lay dying, that “the fear of Heaven be to you like the fear of flesh and blood” (Brachos 28b).
“Is that all?” they exclaimed. The sage’s response: “If only!”
“Think.” he continued. “When a person commits a sin in private, he says ‘May no person see me!’.”
And yet, of course, he is seen all the same. Jimmy Savile was seen, and so are we all.
© 2012 Rabbi Avi Shafran
