Escalating Tensions, Protesters Rile Agudath Israel Over Sex-Abuse Bill
By Rebecca Dube
Inside the grand ballroom of the Midtown Hilton in Manhattan, Agudath Israel of America’s annual dinner was unfolding according to plan. Men and women dressed in traditional yet elegant clothes dined on salmon and listened to Senator Charles Schumer and Mayor Michael Bloomberg pledge their fealty.
Outside, a storm was brewing.
A dozen protesters stood in front of the Hilton’s parking garage and waved signs that said “Agudah: Stop protecting pedophiles.”
Most attendees waved off the protesters or ignored them with a look of distaste.
But Agudath board of trustees member Israel Lefkowitz rolled down his car window to chastise the protesters.
“I am against sexual harassment for all the children,” Lefkowitz said. “But you don’t do this in public.”
The angry exchange outside the annual dinner May 15 for Agudath Israel, a national ultra-Orthodox umbrella group, encapsulates the escalating battle within the Orthodox community over sexual abuse of children by rabbis, yeshiva teachers and other religious authority figures. On one side, a band of loosely organized victims of sexual abuse and their supporters are crying out for community leaders to take a tougher stand against pedophilia. On the other side, many powerful leaders regard any public airing of sexual abuse allegations in the Orthodox community as hillul Hashem, a desecration of God’s name.
One of the protesters, Mark Appel, yelled at Lefkowitz in his car: “Your children are being molested, and you know that [officials from Agudath] are not doing anything about it.”
“Why are you so angry?” Lefkowitz asked.
“What is Agudah doing to my molester?” asked Joe DiAngelo, who says he was raped as a child in a Brooklyn mikveh.
In his defense, Lefkowitz replied that he booted out a principal who was molesting boys at his son’s school.
“What happened to him? Why wasn’t he arrested?” asked Levi Goldberg, a soft-spoken young man wearing a traditional black suit, hat and peyes.
“I do not know,” Lefkowitz said. He called the protest “a desecration of a Godly institution.”
The protesters’ ire was aimed at Agudah’s opposition to a bill now before the state Legislature that would extend the statute of limitations for civil and criminal claims of child sexual abuse and create a one-time, one-year “window” during which victims of crimes committed beyond the statute of limitations could file civil claims against their alleged abusers and the institutions that harbored them.
The bill appears stalled in the state Assembly a few weeks before the legislative session adjourns.
Agudah’s official position is that it supports lengthening the statute of limitations, but opposes the one-year window because it could allow plaintiffs to file decades-old claims.
“Reasonable people can disagree on this,” Agudah spokesman Rabbi Avi Shafran said inside the dinner hall. “We have no problem with extending the statute of limitations, we have no problem with anything preventative, we only have problems with the so-called ‘window’ provision.”
Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, the Novominsker Rebbe and Rosh Agudath Israel of America, took a harsher tone in his dinner address, chiding “the bloggers and the picketers, presumptuous promoters” for the notion that “they know better [than Agudah’s Council of Torah Sages] what is good for the Jews.”
Perlow called child sexual abuse “a serious issue.” He acknowledged a need “for correcting the past – and for addressing the future, creating means to guide against wrongdoing to children.”
The protesters find Agudah’s statements short on specifics.
They accused Agudah of a conflict of interest. The organization is named as a defendant in sex-abuse lawsuits involving Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, accused of molesting dozens of students, including boys at an Agudah-run summer camp, and would likely face more lawsuits if the window legislation passes.
Appel, one of the protesters, is founder of a Jewish community group called Am Echad aimed at promoting Jewish unity and supporting social services. It is New York-based with chapters in other cities.
“I’ve met kids who have been abused [recently] by people who were abusing kids 30 years ago,” said Appel. “These guys [Agudah] are just stalling – they’re emotionless on this issue. So they’re going to sit here tonight and have a nice collective meal, and meanwhile their community is being torn apart.”
Elliot Pasik, a director of the Jewish Board of Advocates for Children, a group in favor of the window legislation as well as mandatory fingerprinting of private school teachers, said he’s disappointed by Agudah’s response.
Contact Rebecca Dube at dube@forward.com.
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but the Talmud allows pedophilia http://www.revisionisthistory.org/talmudtruth.html
Sanhedrin 55b. A Jew may marry a three year old girl (specifically, three years "and a day" old).
Sanhedrin 54b. A Jew may have sex with a child as long as the child is less than nine years old.
Kethuboth 11b. "When a grown-up man has intercourse with a little girl it is nothing."
Uri's comment about pedophilia in the Talmud is totally out of context and viciously malign. The link provided is to an anti-semitic site that reminds one of medieval Talmud burners. Specifically, 1. The quote from Sanhedrin 55b refers to the fact that in Biblical times the father could marry off his young daughter (see Dvarim [Deuteronomy] 22, 16). The passage in Sanhedrin merely states that such a marriage is legal. The sages of the Talmud, however, specifically forbade child marriages (Kidushin 41a). 2. The reference from Sanhedrin 54b ostensibly "permitting sex with children" says no such thing. The Talmud is stating there that illicit intercourse that usually incurs the death penalty is not considered intercourse if the male is under nine or the female under three. 3. The passage that ostensibly says that "intercourse with a little girl is nothing" says only that if a girl under the age of three was raped she is still considered a virgin.
Thanks Uri and Jonathan for clearing that up for me. I know I certainly feel relieved to know that if I, at the age of 3, was raped, I was still a virgin, because, ultimately, at 3 years old, that was my BIG worry (Oh my God, am I still a Virgin???) I can't tell you how much better I feel now. And of course, why would anybody in their right mind even consider the death penalty for "intercourse if the male is under nine or the female is under three"? But, I digress. I do have a question or two: just exactly when were these quotations written? While we sit here arguing semantics and `uotations from thousands of years ago, what is happening to our -children RIGHT NOW? Why in God's name would the Agudah NOT want to end this? Why are we arguing about "windows", or "statutes of limitations", or (my personal favorite) "I am against sexual harassment for all the children,” (Lefkowitz said.) “But you don’t do this in public. "Sexual harrassment"? The word Mr. Lefkowitz, is RAPE. Pure and simple. No frills, nothing to hide behind. It's RAPE. And the day that you and the other members of the Agudah submit your children to this danger is the day YOU have the right to lean out of your "limos" and espouse to anybody who has been through this. What the hell is the matter with all of you? You know what's really sad? We sat and shook our heads and clutched our children every time we heard about a priest who had done the VERY SAME THING. We said "look how long the church has been hiding this". And I say to you now, how long has the Orthodox community been hiding the EXACT SAME THING?
Jonathan Horowitz is clearly very very angry that I have exposed the Talmud for what it is. The website he claims is 'anti-semitic' which is not only a linguistically incorrect word, but just a smear to hide the TRUTH about the Talmud from a scholar who knows his Hebrew quite well and knows, like thousands of other HONEST scholars what the Talmud really says
"The passage in Sanhedrin merely states that such a marriage is legal. The sages of the Talmud, however, specifically forbade child marriages (Kidushin 41a)."
----hmm, that's why Sanhedrin 55b says EXACTLY what it does, as Hoffman has clearly shown what it says. If it 'forbids' child marriages then why say this in the first place?
"The reference from Sanhedrin 54b ostensibly "permitting sex with children" says no such thing. The Talmud is stating there that illicit intercourse that usually incurs the death penalty is not considered intercourse if the male is under nine or the female under three"
---THERE'S NO DIFFERENCE dude! 1. The verse says EXACTLY what Hoffman shows it to say. 2, the fact that having sex with boys under 9 and girls under 3 is NOT PUNISHED here, also proves that it's allowed! You just admitted it, the Talmud DOESN'T CONSIDER IT intercourse when it's a boy under 9 and a girl under 3, therefore there's no punishment, therefore you can do it
"The passage that ostensibly says that "intercourse with a little girl is nothing" says only that if a girl under the age of three was raped she is still considered a virgin."
---nowhere does that verse mention anything about rape! And how is a raped girl considered a virgin anyway? Well if we read on in the same passage, it's because "as tears come again and again when the eye is poked, so does the skin of the hymen".
"While we sit here arguing semantics and `uotations from thousands of years ago, what is happening to our -children RIGHT NOW? "
Trini, being from an Orthodox family I would suppose you would already know the answer to this. If the Talmud ALLOWS for child sex, don't you think you should CONSIDER THAT TO BE THE PROBLEM in these scandals???
these 'semantics and quotations from thousands of years ago' are what allows for the child sex culture in the rabbinic community among a host of other things, such as not informing the gentile authorities when a Jew commits a crime against a Jew (mesirah) such as in this case, and other things.
these 'quotations from thousands of years ago' are what is being taught in yeshivas to children, of course these unsavory verses are not taught to them among a host of other unsavory verses
source: "Judaism Discovered" by Michael A Hoffman II
Ketubot 11b of the Babylonian Talmud (BT) states "...intercourse with a boy under nine years old is not considered a significant sexual act..."
BT Sanhedrin 54b: "...a child less than nine years old cannot...be the object of sodomy" (even if he has been sodomized)
(Hoffman, p. 424-425) "BT Sanhedrin 69b, as recorded by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz for the Steinsaltz Talmud, head of the newly established Israeli Sanhedrin..In BT Sanhedrin 69b it is argued that a woman having sex with a boy less than nine is an act that is exempt from punishment (and therefore permissible), and does not render her a zonah (prostitute) or disqualify her from marrying a Judaic priest, because sex with male children less than age nine is not considered sex....the actual reference in Sanhedrin 69b is to sex between a mother and her own son!...The original ruling exempting punishment...was made by Hillel"
---the ORIGINAL ruling exempting punishment for moms to sexually molest their boys under 9, was made by HILLEL. That's how old this tradition is!
"If a girl is less than three years old, it is permitted to be secluded with her. Likewise, if a boy is less than nine years old a woman is permitted to be alone with him."
--Kitzur Shulchan Aruch: Classic guide to Jewish Law (Metsudah Publications, 1996), v. 2, p. 1023
BT Ketubot 11b: "If a grown-up man has intercourse with a little girl, it is nothing, for having intercourse with a girl less than three years old is like putting a finger in the eye."
notice how self-deceptive the Talmud is when in one instance it apparently 'forbids' something, and then in another it totally allows for it:
Sanhedrin 55b. A Jew may marry a three year old girl (specifically, three years "and a day" old).
this verse is in direct contradiction to John's claim that the Talmud forbids child marriage
The Talmud is NOT paskening (comming up with a final legal rulling about what is or is not permissable)Talmud talks about various ideas and some are taught by one person or another then contradicted and argued about.
To claim that a single passage is the rulling fo what the law is is like saying that the section of American penal law of some state where it uses the language of what a crook must say to be guilty of a certain crime (like extortion) is rulling that the state permits extortion becaus ethe words are in there.
To decide what the law actually Is is called paskening and one of the first things EVERY student of Talmud learns is that we do not pasken FROM the Talmud, it is forbidden.
So these claims that Talmud is permitting sex with 3 years olds is an absolute lie and nothing but pure antisemitism.
If you look carefully at Uris posts he states that Jonathan is "clearly very very (Uri says it twice) angry Jonathan never said anything abouyt being angry, nor did he call anyone any names klike an angry person would be likely to. He did and said nothing whatsoever to indicate anger.
Just like Uri made this false claim of pretending to know about Jonathans so called anger, so too Uri is making uo whatevber he wants about what Talmud allows and claiming it as "truth" simply by his decree.
Do you think Uri really cares about pedophilia or about truth? If he did how come he does not protest the promotion of it on TV and in movies? How about TV shows like Family Guy where Peter (the father) molestes his children in more then one episode? That does not bother Uri, he has to look for obscure passages in Talmud to smear Jews because that is his TRUE agenda.
I wouldn't be surprised if Uri was not even his real name. More like Hans Jew hater, or possibly Mohammed jihadist.
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