There was a story I heard long ago about a servant who offended a rabbi's wife. The wife, in high dudgeon told her spouse that she was taking the servant to the bet din (Jewish court). The rabbi told his wife to wait and he would go with her.
I'm perfectly able to present my case; I don't need you to do it for me.
The rabbi replied that he was going with her to defend the servant.
PERHAPS THERE WAS A TIME AND PLACE where justice for a Jew was only a dream.
But this is the United States in the year 2015 CE (5775, if you prefer); the venues are Miami Beach, Brooklyn, and Washington DC.
And the rabbis still want Jews to deal with criminals only through a bet din.
Never mind that in the U.S. a bet din has no legal standing for criminal matters and cannot enforce any of its decisions.
The rabbi, who has not been named, was accused Wednesday of sexually assaulting a woman who had approached him for religious guidance 13 years ago. On Wednesday evening, a second sexual assault complaint was filed against him. Safed Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu said the women were initially reluctant to report the allegations to the police. The rabbis then turned to the cops with the charges, but were informed they could not file a complaint on behalf of the women, Eliyahu said. “In light of the numerous complainants, we approached the police this week of our own initiative, and during this meeting, it became clear that only if the women maintain there is something criminal in his actions and complains, can an investigation be opened,” the chief rabbi said. Read full article by clicking on the headline ("Popular rabbi...), above.
But in Israel
Popular rabbi nabbed at airport over sex crimes accusations
Like the Catholic church and its pedophile priests and sadistic nuns, everything must be kept "in the family" - the ecclesiastical court, the folks who brought us the Inquisition - and Islam's imams and their Sharīʿah courts, it is almost impossible for the "judges" to rule against one of their own - a rabbi, a priest, an imam.
Even the "Jewish" newspapers* brush any rabbinical crime accusations off their pages; try to find any mention of Rabbi Steve Karro and charges of "lewd and lascivious molestation of a child and lewd and lascivious conduct on a child"
The Miami Channel 10 tv station's Web site shares that "According to an arrest report, Karro, who is a substitute rabbi at Shaare Ezra Sephardic Congregation, intentionally grabbed the buttocks of the victim April 16 while they were at the Karro Art Gallery."
The tv news continued: According to detectives, Karro denied some of the allegations, but said he touched the victim's buttocks for a "cleansing as she was exhibiting negative energy."
Today (June 23) another station is reporting that the alleged victim's mother is claiming that area rabbis are telling her not to complain to (civil) authorities, to bring the matter before a bet din. The mother also contends that she is being shunned by others in the Miami Beach Jewish community for her actions of publicly accusing a rabbi of misconduct.
This is, alas, NOT unique in the Miami Beach Orthodox Jewish community.
The New York Times, under the headline Ultra-Orthodox Shun Their Own for Reporting Child Sexual Abuse reports that a mentally disabled teenage son was being molested in a Jewish ritual bathhouse in Brooklyn. The boy's father, according to the NYT, said that Old friends started walking stonily past him and his family on the streets of Williamsburg. Their landlord kicked them out of their apartment. Anonymous messages filled their answering machine, cursing Mr. Jungreis for turning in a fellow Jew. And, he said, the mother of a child in a wheelchair confronted his mother-in-law, saying the same man had molested her son, and she “did not report this crime, so why did your son-in-law have to?”
While the crimes the Jewish leadership - rabbis, teachers, camp counselors, et al - ARE "Jewish crimes," that is actions prohibited by Jewish law, they ALSO are crimes according to U.S. law, crimes committed in the U.S.
Given any group's proclivity to protect its own from attacks by outsiders, many in the Jewish community prefer to protect criminals and - in a rare instance - take these people before a powerless bet din, a court that, in a Western democracy where law allegedly is the rule - has no power to punish; worse, that has shown no inclination to punish criminals even within its limited means; even if it did, it cannot compel a criminal to accept a punishment (e.g., make restitution for a money crime).
We live in the United States in 5775/2015, not Israel under a foreign power, not Europe through the 19th century, not the Soviet Union and its successors, not in Muslim countries where a Muslim's word ALWAYS trumped a Jew's word - not in places where Jewish courts had some power and where government courts often were notoriously anti-Jewish.
It's time America's Jews realized that government courts are independent of the "old boy" network of any group's power elite.
It's time to turn to government courts to deal with crimes committed by the powerful against the powerless.
The Jewish Journal is published by the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale but includes a Miami-Dade edition; this edition omits any mention of Karro and the accusations while covering other criminal activity.
