1) Midnight thread time2) I am having to work up the courage to do this one.3) But when I saw the documentary “One of Us” on @netflix something just broke in me.4) The movie is the story of three former Hasidim from Brooklyn. They are immediately recognizable to me as members of a cult called Satmar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBPn5oQNutI …5) The key characteristic of a cult is that it exercises total control over your life through a combination of charismatic leadership, brainwashing and physical coercion, and Satmar Hasidim fit the criteria and then some.6) This documentary was extremely triggering for me because it brought back memories of my own childhood and specifically the fact that I would be considered a “black sheep” by Hasidim.
https://www.netflix.com/title/80118101?source=35 …7) You see in their world anyone who questions the cult is considered…not evil but something like a piece of garbage.8) I guess I just couldn’t believe this movie was made in 2017 – two years ago – and they’re still getting away with the same crap.9) Each of the ex-Hasidim in the movie broke from the cult and was punished severely. The wife who was beaten recalled her husband’s attitude that the law could not touch him; she was openly told that she would lose her children to the cult, and she did.10) The husband who left and became an actor had – like her – been married off in his teens. When he decided to leave their life, he lost his children completely.11) The excuse they give is that they’re traumatized by the Holocaust. They have to rebuild the religious community. The children are the property of the community.
LIES12) The deeper truth is that the trauma of the Holocaust disfigured the survivors mentally, and survivors in turn forced a crazy, extremist, cultist form of religion onto innocent children. Because this life is unsustainable, they act out constantly.13) The most prominent form of acting out has to do with the sexual abuse of children.
Period, full stop.14) The third story in this documentary was about a young man, age 19, who was raped by an official at his summer camp.
He ends up in rehab – he is the problem.15) I wanted to cry watching this young man tell his story, of being assaulted while the religious boys looked in the window, standing there holding onto the sill, and when the young man fought and ran, the rabbi ran after him and raped him in the woods.16) When the young man tried to tell what happened they said he had imagined it, and he half-jokingly said, “yeah, the guy fell on me,” and I sat there sad and horrified and so did my husband.17) The young man said how the guy was never charged, never anything, he’s probably still at the camp, and he doesn’t wish him bad, etc. etc. etc.
And I’m sitting there thinking why isn’t this guy in jail????????18) And it occurred to me that the reason he is not in jail is because the victims are too caught up in hurting and healing to really go after their attackers at all. The parents are in the cult. Outside the cult is “danger.”19) It occurred to me that you can love your religion and refuse to defend immoral behavior – that this is the highest form of love. But if you try to stand up against them, YOU are the problem, you are disloyal, you are ratting out the Jews, you must be troubled yourself.20) It is simply not acceptable for us to function this way anymore. I seek to know the humanity of other people and I must face the inhumanity of my own where it exists.21) This is the theme of this week’s supplemental Bible reading – the Jews have fallen into immorality and God calls them out and judges them for it.
Ezekiel 22:1-16
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ezekiel+22%3A1-16&version=NIV …22) Ezekiel 22:
1 “The word of the Lord came to me:
2 “Son of man, will you judge her? Will you judge this city of bloodshed? Then confront her with all her detestable practices”23) 3 “and say: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: You city that brings on herself doom by shedding blood in her midst and defiles herself by making idols”24) 4 “u have become guilty because of the blood u have shed & have become defiled by the idols u have made. u have brought your days 2 a close, and the end of your years has come.Therefore I will make you an object of scorn 2 the nations & a laughingstock to all the countries.”25) “5 Those who are near and those who are far away will mock you, you infamous city, full of turmoil.”26) God Himself called out the Jews when their behavior was wrong27) The messiah is at the doorstep, the messiah is here but we will have to break the force of our own egos…repent…stop pretending that there is some other side which is bad, and our side which is good, and seek the unity within all.28) We talk about conspiracy – I can plainly see a conspiracy among people who consider themselves “normal” Orthodox Jews (from the moderate looking to the extremist) – to cover up pedophilia and shuttle pedophiles from place to place to hide them and avoid shame, etc.29) I can plainly see how victims are “othered” and their lives ruined so as to preserve the self-esteem of the larger group.
As in the Netflix show, the rabbi says (speaking of the boy who was raped) that “we must be empathetic” etc. and NOT “we must PROSECUTE THE RAPIST”30) Just a few concrete examples. I don’t need to drag this out.31) In 2012 a young Hasidic woman described her rape and sadistic sexual torture at the hands of “Rabbi” Nehemya Weberman who was sentenced to more than 100 years in jail for his crimes. The head of the Satmar cult called the girl, essentially, a whore.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/nechemya-weberman-guilty-of-sexually-abusing-girl-he-was-counseling?fbclid=IwAR1jMvlgu8VcCe09aQvw_Xrb8PBj-ygzczJa40gB5eK6S2pzsR5-U1_c7K4 …32) I have mentioned the phenomenon of the “child rape assembly line” described in 2013 by a heroic rabbi who has dedicated his career to stopping pedophilia (for which they threw bleach in his face)
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qbe8bp/the-child-rape-assembly-line-0000141-v20n11 …33) 2016 – “Israel Becoming a ‘Refuge for Pedophiles,’ Warns Advocate for Child Sex Abuse Victims” as perpetrators take advantage of the Law of Return to escape prosecution
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-becoming-a-refuge-for-pedophiles-1.5420848 …34) 2019 – Israel’s Deputy Health Ministor is suspected of pressuring a psychiatrist to declare “unfit” a school principal evading extradition to Australia for child sex crimes: “‘What God Are They Praying to That Protects Abusers?”
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-sisters-accusing-ex-principal-of-abuse-furious-health-czar-allegedly-aided-her-1.6999222 …35) 2016 “Child molester sues N.Y. rabbi over tweets” – the rabbi was trying to warn people in Israel about the presence of a molester so he wouldn’t harm children
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/08/04/molester-lawsuit-rabbi/88272818/ …36) Australian abuse scandal at ultra-Orthodox Melbourne yeshiva: “The intimidation & cover-up attempts came not just from the Chabad community….Much of it came from the mainstream Jewish community, including those at the highest levels of leadership.”
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/child-sexual-abuse-cover-ups-and-intimidation-a-global-jewish-community-snapshot/ …37) “Sexual abuse allegations against rabbi divide Baltimore’s Orthodox Jewish community” – “Some ask why Krawatsky was allowed to work with children long after Child Protective Services said it had found credible evidence he abused two of the boys. “
https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-co-abuse-jewish-institutions-20180206-story.html …38) Alleged sexual abuse of the male students at the prominent Ner Israel Rabbinical College and High School – GOING BACK TO THE 1950s
http://theawarenesscenter.blogspot.com/2014/01/ner-israel-rabbinical-college-and-high.html …
39) “denial, backlash against victims, and the manipulation of the secular justice system have placed Orthodox Jewish community leaders in the position of defending or even enabling child abusers” (2014)
https://www.amazon.com/Sexual-Shonda-Concealment-Orthodox-Communities/dp/0786471255 …40) “the counselor, an ultra-Orthodox woman,,,.was nice to her and made her feel special. She began inviting her to sleep over for the Sabbath. Within a few months, Sokolovsky says, Sheinkopf began molesting her. It went on for over a year.”
https://forward.com/news/402472/orthodox-camp-counselor-of-traumatic-sex-abuse/ …41) Opposition to the (NY) Child Victims Act, by Jews
“Our concern is simply protecting the economic viability of Jewish schools. Yeshivas operate on shoestring budgets.” Rabbi Avi Shafran, Agudath Israel of America’s director of public affairs”
http://protectjewishkids.com/agudath-israel-and-new-yorks-child-victims-act/ …42) “could subject schools and other vital institutions to ancient claims and capricious litigation, and place their very existence in severe jeopardy.”
– “Joint statement of Agudath Israel and Torah Umesorah, April 21, 2009″43) All this said, the Jewish community is growing stronger and stronger in its willingness to root out the sick dogs in the community who abuse children.
What has made this happen?44) The landmark decision by ONE MAN at ONE JEWISH NEWSPAPER — Gary Rosenblatt at The Jewish Week — to take a stand.
http://www.jewishsagesoftoday.com/pdf/rosenblatt/Rosenblattsm.pdf …
45) In a carefully researched article, “Stolen Innocence,” Rosenblatt went up against EVERYONE WHO WAS ANYONE to CALL A PEDOPHILE A PEDOPHILE.
46) It was an act that could have ended his career, but Rosenblatt went for it.
Ending a 30-year cycle of abuse.
Thirty years – 30 x 12 = 360 months = 1560 weeks = 10,950 days where an abuser got to do WHATEVER HE WANTED.47) Imagine the horrors that children have suffered for so many thousands of days in the Jewish community, the cult community, the cult where you cannot speak out or you are just literally thrown onto the street.48) “‘Conventional Sins’ [a documentary]….focuses on Meir Bar, the son of a revered rabbinic leader of an extreme Hasidic sect in Bnei Brak. The sect shunned Bar after he testified testified to police against a network of Haredi pedophiles.”
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/culture/.premium-defying-a-conspiracy-of-silence-about-pedophilia-1.5449302 …49) “The whole case was hushed up. Throughout the film, broadcast this week on Yes Docu, Bar copes with a series of sexual assaults by a number of men, some of whom abused him for years while others attacked him at random.”50) If we truly want #pedogate#pizzagate#humantrafficking#childsextrafficking to end we will have to open up the wounds and drain them all.
(End.)___________
By Dr. Dannielle Blumenthal. All opinions are the author’s own. Public domain. You can also read this online here.Posted 11th June by Dannielle BlumenthalLabels: #BibleStudyCoffeeTime
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