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| Rabbi Ephraim Padwa as he appears in the "Dispathces' documentary |
I don’t know if Rabbi Ephraim Padwa is a Satmar Chasid or
not. But it is clear from footage secretly filmed that his approach is pretty
much the same as theirs.
In that footage - a former
Charedi who as a child was a victim of abuse met with Rabbi Padwa who is the
head of the Charedi organization ‘ The Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations’.
The victim had a hidden camera that recorded the entire meeting unbeknownst to Rabbi
Padwa.
Rabbi Padwa is a man of considerable influence and respect
among Charedim. When was asked by the victim whether to report his abuse to the police
he was told an unequivocal no. He may not under any circumstances go to
the police with these allegations as that would violate the very serious
prohibition of Mesirah, informing on a fellow Jew to secular authorities.
In a later communication the Union modified that claim saying
that there are some circumstances where one would be allowed to do that. But
they did not specify when and insisted that the rabbis must have full control over
when those circumstances apply in each and every case.
That sound more like damage control than clarification. And
in and of itself - troubling enough. The fact is that Rabbi Padwa did not mention any
exceptions and was clearly uncomfortable with getting the police involved in
any way. But he didn’t know that others would be watching him. There was no ‘buts’
about it. Mesirah is a very serious sin and the problem of sex abuse is best handled
internally by the rabbis themselves.
Mesirah is a very complicated issue. Although some people
feel that it still applies in our day even when there is a just society, many Poskim feel that is no longer the case. The Aruch HaShulchan (R’ Yechiel Michel
Epstein) says that it is not even the case in a place like the Czarist Russia
of his day, where clearly Jews were persecuted.
But not reporting abuse is only half the story. And something
Rabbi Padwa did not address. It was however addressed by another Charedi rabbi who
is a colleague of Rabbi Padwa. His conscience forced him to come forward with
the truth – albeit anonymously for fear of reprisals. He described what happens
to those who end up going to the police instead of the rabbis. They become pariahs
that are expelled socially from their community. He describes how this happened when the father
of one victim he knows went to the authorities.
This is not unlike what happened in Willaimsburg during the Weberman
trial where the victim was called a whore by
one of the two Satmar Rebbes; her family lost their business; and has suffered
all kinds of indignities.
It is ironic that one of the reasons they are so adamant about
keeping abuse secret is to spare their reputations. They present themselves as a pristinely moral community where things like this don’t happen. With all their efforts to eliminate sexuality
from the public square this kind of exposure undermines everything they say
they are.
So of course they want to keep it quiet. They see it as
amounting to a Chilul HaShem when things like this become public. They want to
keep it all quiet so that their reputation as a holy community stands up. Thereby
they justify their claims that their modesty rules protects them from these
kinds of things.
What they fail to understand – perhaps because their lives
are so isolated from the rest of the
world – is that there is no such thing as keeping sex abuse secret anymore.
They can no longer keep a lid on it. The media is very good at finding dirt. If
there is any to be found- they will find it and broadcast it to the world! Ask
thr Catholic Church who treated abuse in their environs the same way Rabbi
Padwa and his community does.
But a cover-up that is exposed - is what the real Chilul
HaShem is. Especially when it involves the kind of threats that accompany
warnings to a victim and their families not to go public. Threats they very clearly
carry out if their warnings are not heeded.
In any case the documentary is available on YouTube.
I wish I could say I was surprised by it. Unfortunately I wasn’t. It was pretty
predictable.
Will this kind of exposure change the way the Charedi world
does things? I don’t know. It hasn’t yet. But perhaps with the Weberman verdict
and all the negative publicity and documentaries like this one-it will. At
least I hope it will.
