Case of Rabbi Shlomo Aviner
(AKA: HaRav Shlomo Aviner, Rabbi Shlomo Chaim HaKohen Aviner, Shlomo Chaim Aviner)
Rosh Yeshiva - Ateret Cohanim Yeshiva - Old City of Jerusalem
Rabbi of Beit El, Israel
CALL TO ACTION: Stop Allowing Alleged Sex Offender, Rabbi Shlomo Aviner From Being A Spokes Person On Child Abuse.
May 23, 2008
Back in 2002, serious allegations were made against Rabbi Shlomo Aviner of sexually harassing women both verbally and physically. These behaviors are considered to fall under the catagory of "clergy sexual abuse". Like in many other cases, those who tried to speak out where shunned and made to look as if they were crazy.
Rabbi Shlomo Aviner continues to be the senior rabbi and a Rosh yeshiva (dean of a seminary) in Jerusalem, Israel. In the last few months Aviner has been publicly speaking out against child abuse as a PR campaign to correct his image. This needs to be stopped!
Due to the seriousness of the past allegation, Rabbi Aviner's actions should be scene as endangering the safety of adolescent girls and adult women, who might see him as a "safe person." The Awareness Center is demanding that Rabbi Aviner undergo a psychological evaluation conducted by a mental health professional approved by our organization prior to him becoming a spokes person on the issue of child abuse.
Please write letters to the editor of the following Israeli newspapers to ensure they are aware that their actions of quoting this alleged sex offender may lead to another woman being harmed.
YNET News
Editor in Chief
click here to send letters to the editor
Jerusalem Post
Telephone 972-2-531-5666
David Horovitz, Editor-in-Chief - davidh@jpost.com
Amir Mizroch, News Editor - amirm@jpost.com
Haaretz
972-3-512-1212
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Also see:
When A Family Member Molests: Reality, Conflict, and The Need For Support
Recidivism of Sex Offenders (U.S. Department of Justice: Center for Sex Offender Management)
Background HIstory: Rabbi Shlomo
Aviner
Rosh Hayeshiva and Rosh Yeshiva (Dean of Seminary) and Chairman of the Board
November, 2002 -- Allegations were made against Rabbi Shlomo Aviner of clergy sexual abuse.
Rabbi Shlomo Aviner was born in 1943 in German Occupied Lyon,
France. There he was active in Bnei Akiva youth movement; and at one time
became the leader Aviner also has been active in the religious Zionist
youth movement, eventually assuming the role of national director.
Rabbi Aviner holds a M.A. in Mathematics and is an Electrical Engineer by profession.
After relocating to Israel in 1966, Rabbi Aviner studied at Yeshivat Merkaz Harav which was under the direction of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook, son of Israel's first Chief Rabbi, Avraham Yitzchak Kook.
At one point Rabbi Aviner became the rabbinical leader of Kibbutz Lavi in the Galil and Moshav Keshet on the Golan Heights. Since 1981, he has been the rabbi of Bet El.
He is also a Reserve Lieutenant in the Israel Defense Forces.
Rabbi Aviner's known for providing spiritual counseling to youth and young couples to Prime Ministers and heads of the Security Establishment.
In 2005, two women accused the Aviner of creating emotionally intimate relationships with them. These relationships included his expressions of his love for them during regular late-night phone conversations, extracting details from them of their sexuality and promoting an unhealthy emotional dependence on him.
Today, Rabbi Aviner serves as the head rabbi of Beit El and as Rosh Yeshiva (Dean) of Ateret Cohanim Yeshiva, which is located in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem and a leader of the Religious Zionist movement. Rabbi Aviner has hundreds of published works. He has columns that appear weekly in the Israeli daily Ma'ariv, and in the Machon Meir weekly newsletter "BeAhava U'Bemuna"; and currently has a regular radio show with Arutz Sheva.
By Barbara Sofer
Barbara Sofer - Nov. 8, 2002
http://www.barbarasofer.com/html/nov82002.html
Only the deepest military secrets are censored in Israel; although several laws remain on the books, they're rarely enforced. But this weekend, censorship was at the heart of passionate discussions at our Jerusalem dinner table.
First, there was the question of the magazine cover story in Ma'ariv about the alleged sex-related misdeeds of Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, a leading religious Zionist leader. Some asked if defamation of character ( Aviner was not charged with a crime) is allowed. While the radio publicized the supposed expose, posters appeared in our neighborhood urging religious Jews to boycott the newspaper as punishment, and to discourage reading the reputation-damaging implications against Aviner.
This raised the question of whether anyone should be telling us what to read, particularly on such a sensitive subject. Some at our table argued that those of us identified as "religious" need to show solidarity with a rabbi and assume he was being persecuted by a scoop-motivated reporter. But then, knowing how rarely women's grievances concerning sexual harassment are taken seriously, should we laud a paper that takes them at face value? Would fear of exposure encourage rabbinical figures to follow stricter rules of conduct or, just the opposite, would it discourage them from interceding in family problems? And finally, should we practice self-censorship and not read the newspaper?
The other point of discussion was the screening at the Tel Aviv Cinemateque of Israel Arab actor Mohammad Bakri's film Jenin, Jenin: A One-Sided Movie, despite requests from the families of those killed in Jenin to cancel the showing.
Bakri's movie is admittedly "one-sided," and presents a skewed, anti-Israel view of the battle fought during Operation Defense Shield. Would cancellation of the movie backfire and create publicity, bringing people to go out of their way to see it?
Would the decision of a public body to show the movie in Israel provide a justification for showings all over the world? After all, how could Jews in London and Philadelphia protest when the film was shown in the heart of Israel?
Orthodox Jews look back in horror at scandals that have centered around religious leaders, most notably the abuse of students by the principal of the Netiv Meir Bnei Akiva Yeshiva High School, and the abuse of both girls and boys by a prominent youth leader in New York. In both cases, initial complaints were hushed up and the crimes continued under the noses of religious authorities. On one hand, these incidents have made us increasingly worried about the desire to protect the good name of the community. But if we go along, then we share complicity in the shushing. On the other hand, our shame over the actions of these sick and sickening community leaders has left us open to the possibility of witch hunts. How unfortunate it would be if we stereotyped our own spiritual leaders as demonic voyeurs, and if those who dared to help grown ups with grown up problems were put on trial every time.
Anyone who took the trouble to read the article about Aviner would be baffled by the hype. The journalist simply couldn't come up with any of the promised damning facts, and the testimony of the accusing women was full of holes and questions. Given the content, the prominent placement of the article and its promotion on the radio certainly rings more of anti-religious prejudice than a sacred campaign. Journalist Kalman Leibskind and editor Amnon Dankner have been grossly irresponsible.
On the other hand, the campaign by portions of the Orthodox community to control our reading habits was a poor choice, reminding us of the common rabbinical silencing on this very issue. Critical reading is an essential skill for a free society.
Does that mean that everything should be allowed in public media? The ban on playing Wagner in Israel is reflective of a national sensitivity to the feelings of Holocaust survivors. If the producers of the play currently running in Egypt based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion want it to appear in Habima, should they be allowed? Why should we be so uncaring about the sensitivities of our soldiers and the families of those maimed and killed in Jenin, who were there seeking out terrorists? And by the way, aren't we still at war?
So many lies have been told about the behavior of our soldiers in Jenin that the truth has been hidden behind a screen of hate. My neighbor Dr. David Zangen, who served as chief medical officer for Brigade Five in Jenin, was approached by the families of the dead soldiers to see if he could do anything to call off the screening. He approached friends with influence in the movie world, and they advised him that the most effective course of action would be to attend the showing and register objections during the discussion period scheduled to follow the film.
Sounds reasonable, right? Okay, the movie admittedly presents only the Palestinian side. Still, Zangen was surprised to see an elderly patient he'd personally treated in Jenin and then transferred to Afula telling a tale about how Israeli soldiers had punished him for not being able to stand after being shot by shooting him again.
The film won an ovation from the audience.
Zangen, who, unlike the film maker, was an eyewitness, was given the mike to protest the distortions. This pediatrician, whose daily work involves treating diabetic Jewish and Palestinian children at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, and who treated both Jews and Palestinians in Jenin, was booed down and called a murderer. "How many kids did you kill today?"
There were Arabs in the audience, but most were Jews. There's something wrong with this picture. We send our children to war and then demoralize them by applauding those who call them murderers.
Are those who decide what constitutes culture in Israel really so far removed from reality? Don't we sometimes seem absurd in our own eyes?
By Zev Stub
The Jerusalem Post - March 21, 2003, Friday (BOOKS; Pg. 12B)
Moadim Lesimcha: Explorations Into The Jewish Holidays by Shlomo Aviner.
Urim Publications. 208 pp. $ 22
Perhaps the most important legacy of the first chief rabbi
of Israel, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, is his philosophy as expressed in his
writings.
The Rav, as he is known in certain circles, put special emphasis on a vision of unity which values every Jew as part of a national whole, and provides a practical framework for nurturing unconditional love of all Jews. He held a messianic view of Eretz Yisrael, seeing its resettlement as the beginning of the Redemption. After the Rav's death, his son Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook continued his teachings as the spiritual leader of one of the most controversial and misunderstood of Israel's religious camps, the Gush Emunim movement. Established after the Six Day War expanded Israel's borders to the Jordan, it saw the resettling of Eretz Yisrael Hashlema (the whole Land of Israel) as the key to reaching the Messianic era.
Today, perhaps the most outspoken and influential of the camp's many colorful leaders is Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, the rosh yeshiva of Ateret Kohanim, the Chief Rabbi of Beit El, and the bestselling author of more than 50 works on Jewish topics.
Unfortunately, his works have been largely inaccessible to English speakers here and abroad because he writes exclusively in Hebrew.
This is a pity, because the philosophy of both Rav Kooks has proved critical in shaping Israel's political map in the past 35-odd years, and has influenced Israelis across the spectrum with its powerful spiritual and nationalistic messages.
Moadim Lesimcha: Explorations Into The Jewish Holidays is a step toward fixing that problem. A collection of translated articles from Aviner's popular Hebrew book, Tal Hermon, it delves into the deep spiritual significance of each festival, through the window of Kook's thought.
Thus, for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, he addresses the concept of repentance as the basis of the universe; for Succot, he analyzes the relationship between the material and the spiritual; for Hanukka, he differentiates between miracles and faith, and so on.
For a change of pace, Aviner deals with issues of faith resulting from the Holocaust.
When it comes to Purim, Aviner paints a broad view of history, connecting ancient Shushan with the end of days in "The Days of Purim Will Never Be Nullified." In "The Mitzva to Drink," he shows that drinking, done in a holy context, can reveal our hidden strengths. And in "Kneeling Saps our Strength," he describes the necessity of Jewish pride as the source of our nation's vigor.
Aviner sums up Mordechai's defiance of Haman by saying, "To all generations of Jews, the message is clear: We must be strong and proud and not capitulate out of weakness and lack of self-confidence."
True to his Zionist roots, Aviner includes sections about the "holidays" of Yom Ha'atzmaut and Yom Yerushalayim. In these, he lays out the background for his nationalist views, as he describes "The Process of Redemption" and "The Mitzva of Eretz Yisrael."
In the former, he writes: "It is clear that the establishment of an independent State of Israel is part of the messianic process foretold by our prophets.
"Obviously, the establishment of the State is not the fulfillment of everything that our prophets promised; it is only part of the redemption...
Only at a later stage will we achieve internal freedom..."
While he is known for his hard line on certain issues, Aviner displays awealth of compassion, humor, and common sense. In his guide to Pessah cleaning, he writes:
"It shouldn't take more than a day to clean the whole house, including the kitchen. Anything more than that is a stringency. If we are not capable of dealing with the extra workload we decide to take on, we deplete our energy and take out our exhaustion on our families.
"Not only is there increased tension between husband and wife, but we show our children a very negative example by shouting at them... The husband and children are trembling in fear in some corner and eating while the mother glares at them like a drill sergeant. Is this preparation for Pessah!? No, it is a reign of terror, with the mother as Pharaoh presiding."
Moadim Lesimcha, which follows on the success of a recent translation of another of Aviner's books, Dimensions of Love, on relationships, is clearly intended for advanced readers with some background in religious scholarship.
For such people, particularly for those with little exposure to Rav Kook's legacy, it can provide a fascinating gateway into the works of one of modern Israel's most vibrant personalities.
When no one can hear you scream:
After complaining that a senior rabbi harassed her, a settlement resident becomes an outcast
By Ruth Sinai
Haaretz Daily - March 31, 2003
They warned her mother that her sisters' chances of a good match would be damaged, claims B.G. They tried to turn her brother and her husband's family against her. Over 100 rabbis, she says, including at least three candidates for the post of chief rabbi, signed notices that appeared in newspapers calling her a liar. Speeches have been made denouncing her, she claims, while Rabbi Moshe Bleicher, head of the Shavei Hebron Yeshiva, has published an article saying she suffers from mental illness and from hallucinations.
This is only part of the degradation B.G., a settlement resident, has suffered since a newspaper interview five months ago in which she alleged that she had been the victim of "improper behavior of a sexual nature," as she puts it, on the part of Beit El rabbi, Shlomo Aviner, who also heads the Ateret Cohanim Yeshiva.
A second woman also alleged in the same interview that Aviner had sexually harassed her, both physically and verbally, and that she had been forced to move away.
"The mask of abuse and scheming that we lifted simply astounded us - 123 rabbis claimed that the two women were crazy and liars without knowing a thing about them, just because of what Rabbi Aviner and Rabbi Bleicher said," says Hannah Kahat, head of "Kolech" ("Your Voice") a forum for religious women that seeks to improve their status within the community.
The mass mobilization of the rabbinical institution to defend Rabbi Aviner has been coupled with a campaign not meant merely to silence the allegations, but also to eject these women from their community. Their full names have been diffused throughout the settlements along with supposed details of their lives.
B.G. felt like she had been backed into a corner. The two women filed a complaint with the police, but it was made clear to them that in this case, the matter was only borderline on the criminal. Even their appeals to a number of top rabbis, including Mordechai Eliahu, former Sephardi chief rabbi, were rejected. Only Rabbi Eli Ben-Dahan, head of the Rabinnical Court, was prepared to look into matters, but only on condition that they did not go to any other body. By talking to the papers, and thus exposing the allegations against Aviner, however, they broke the rules.
"Everything that I underwent emotionally until it all came out is steeped in pain," said B.G. a few days ago. "But what hurts most can be summed up in six words - my voice is not being heard. No one in my camp ... people I grew up with, whose opinion and honesty I always valued, is willing to listen to me."
The mere thought that these allegations will be hushed up and that Rabbi Aviner will be protected and remain a favorite of the Hassidim, while she is left with all the pain and embarrassment, has given B.G. little rest. Just last week, she filed a petition with a district court of the Kiryat Araba religious council in which she alleges that Aviner caused "severe and prolonged emotional distress ... involving sexual innuendo, prohibited affectionate touches and expressions." She also alleges that Aviner and Bleicher have given her a bad name and she asks the court to order the rabbis to publicly recant what they said and to compensate her. When it comes to such petitions in religious courts, however, the defendant must be in agreement before a trial is launched.
Aviner said in response that he is happy that there will finally be some sort of clarification of the case. He claims to have suggested such a discussion in a rabbinical court or some other such forum before the case was made public, which would have saved a lot of suffering on both sides, he adds, but his suggestion was rejected.
In her interview with the Ma'ariv newspaper, B.G. relates how 15 years ago, she went to Aviner seeking marriage counseling. This continued over the course of eight years, involving dozens of conversations, often late into the night, frequent meetings and letters. In the article, it is alleged that Aviner told B.G. that she had a beautiful body and allegedly said that "penetration is a very nice thing."
Aviner in response did not deny some of the statements attributed to him, but claims that they were taken out of context. He told Haaretz that the claims were all lies that had already been investigated by rabbis and other officials and found to be totally groundless.
B.G. is stunned by this claim, which also appeared in a statement by Bleicher, as neither she nor the other woman were asked to testify. What kind of investigation could have been held without consulting the two women, she asks. Sources close to Rabbi Aviner said in response that Rabbi Bleicher knows a thing or two about the complainant as he knows her brother-in-law and one of her brothers. Bleicher himself was unavailable for comment.
By Eetta Prince-Gibson
Jerusalem Post - April 11, 2003
SECTION: FEATURES; Pg. 7B
The 'Women of the Wall' didn't have a prayer this week when the High Court of Justice ruled against their being allowed to sing God's praises alongside the men. Box at end of text.
It was supposed to be the final chapter in the Women of the Wall's 14-year long political, legal and religious struggle. But it probably won't be.
Earlier this week, the High Court of Justice ruled that "Women of the Wall," an Orthodox women's prayer group, will not be allowed to pray aloud at the Western Wall with a Torah scroll, while wearing tallitot (prayer shawls) or other religious garments.
By a five-to-four majority, the Court accepted the government's position that the women's prayers are "a danger to public safety," and instructed the government to prepare the area of Robinson's Arch (an archeological site near the Wall) for the women's use.
"The Court realized that these women are a provocation to Torah-abiding Jews and finally put an end to this outrage," says a satisfied Rabbi Daniel Nasi, director of Manof, a haredi information center. "The Court has now officially declared women as second class citizens," declares a distraught Anat Hoffman, one of the leaders of the women's group and a former Jerusalem city councilwoman.
Although once they numbered close to 400, they are now a small group of 100 or so, and they are asking for 11 hours a year - once a month, for one hour, on Rosh Hodesh (the beginning of the lunar month).
Yet it has taken the High Court of Justice 14 years and a panel of nine judges to reach this decision - which is filled with legal holes, political pitfalls, and social implications.
Robinson's Arch, the site proposed by the Court, is the only archeological site in the vicinity of the Temple Mount that remains exactly as it was since the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. The Western Wall cannot be touched from there, due to blockage by large boulders - which fell during the Destruction and have remained. The site is not accessible to wheelchairs or baby carriages, and there are no restrooms or other facilities. The Antiquities Authority has already announced that it objects to making any changes there.
Even the Court itself doesn't seem to think this is the final stage, since it added the proviso that if the government doesn't prepare the Robinson's Arch area within 12 months, it will have to permit the Women of the Wall to pray at the Wall.
Until then, the women will have to continue to pray at the Wall as they have until now - quietly, almost silently, without any sacred garments. When they wish to read from the Torah, they will leave the Wall and read in an alcove in the Jewish Quarter, with a distant view of the Wall for a background.
By law, any woman who violates these restrictions could be sent to jail for six months.
ON THE day of the ruling, Bracha Goldweisser, a 36- year-old Jerusalemite and mother of eight, is praying silently at the Wall, touching the ancient stones with her well-worn prayer book. She is dressed modestly, her hair covered tightly with a black kerchief. She identifies herself as a haredi woman.
It is not Rosh Hodesh, and so the Women of the Wall are not at the Wall. Told about the court ruling, Goldweisser says, "Thank God, who, in his wisdom, guided the judges. These women are such an abomination that even those secular judges understood that they have to be stopped.
"Women are not supposed to sing out loud. They should be quiet and tzniesdik," she says, using the Yiddish term for modest. "God does not want women to sing their prayers, and He won't listen to them."
Sometimes, she says, people praying at the Wall are so enraged that they spit at the women, curse them, throw things at them, and even hit them. "I never hit them, but I understand the people who do," she says. "My husband is on the men's side praying, and these women disturb him."
As always, the Western Wall area is filled with noise. At least three bar-mitzva groups, following different traditions and reading from differently-shaped Torah scrolls, have congregated on the men's side. Church bells and a muezzin's call from a nearby mosque add to the din. How could a small group of women bother Goldweisser's husband, at least 75 meters away?
"Just knowing that there are women like that at this holy site bothers him," she says.
Throughout the 14 years of legal battles see box , Women of the Wall have insisted on their right to pray at the women's section of the Wall according to "The Three T's" - wrapped in a tallit, reading from the Torah, and saying their tefilla (prayer) out loud.
In their briefs to the courts, the women have cited Orthodox rabbinical sources who say that their form of praying is not a violation of Halacha. Although some of the women belong to the more liberal Conservative and Reform movements, they have all deferred to their more strict Orthodox members and do not include the parts of the services which, according to most Orthodox authorities, are forbidden to women. Furthermore, they have photographs from the turn of the century proving that less than 100 years ago, men and women prayed together at the Wall.
Few haredi authorities recognize women's rights to prayer groups, however.
"These women are liars," says Nasi. "No respectable rabbi would ever say that what these women are doing is acceptable according to Jewish law. Women may pray at the Wall - as long as they respect our customs and laws."
SO, BY rejecting the women's petition, was the High Court of Justice ruling on an issue of Jewish law? Responds Frances Raday, professor of law at Hebrew University and chief counsel for Women of the Wall: "Yes, the Court accepted the most narrow, exclusionary interpretations of Jewish law, even though there are other valid interpretations."
But should the Supreme Court be ruling on religious issues?
"This is not merely a religious issue, and it goes right to the problem of religion and state in Israel," says Raday. "The Kotel is maintained and paid for by the state. The state must never support practices that are blatantly discriminatory against women or against any other group." The case of Women of the Wall, Raday continues, "represents issues of basic human and women's rights, and the fight for pluralism over fundamentalis and extremism, between enlightenment and theocracy."
Hoffman sees the religious struggle in feminist terms.
"The Kotel is a public space, and women in Israel struggle to take their place in public space. Not just at the Kotel - in the government, in the Knesset, in public policy, everywhere."
Hoffman also notes that while the haredi men and women get angry when they see the women praying in tallitot or using other traditionally male symbols, they become incensed when they hear women praying out loud.
"It's our voices that infuriate them," she says. "Our voices are emblematic. Women in Israel are silenced - not just in religion, but everywhere. Only one type of voice is supposed to be heard - the male voice. Maybe if we could hear the other half of the public, our society would be more just and more politically, socially, economically, and religiously successful.
Malka Puterkovsky, a teacher at the Lindenbaum Seminary for Women and a religious Jewish feminist, agrees that much of the objection to Women of the Wall is an attempt to silence women. She connects this silence to her own recent experiences. As a member of Kollech, a religious feminist group, she has provided vocal support for the women who have accused Rabbi Shlomo Aviner of sexual harassment and misconduct.
"Like the Women of the Wall, we have been condemned, humiliated, and vilified by the male leaders of our community. Like the Women of the Wall, they have tried to silence us," she says.
Hoffman believes that because groups like Women of the Wall and Kollech have refused to be silenced, the backlash against them is even stronger. She is not surprised that the fight is first played out at the Kotel, which is so central and symbolic in Judaism.
"First, the haredi men tried to silence Women of the Wall. Then they ruled that female soldiers would not be allowed to sing at the swearing-in ceremonies for Israel Defense Forces at the Kotel. Then, women were not allowed to sing at the president's inauguration at the Knesset - and this time, the secular men agreed, too.
"This even goes beyond women," Hoffman continues. "Recently, I was at the Kotel on Shabbat, and a disabled man came in a motorized wheelchair. The haredim told him to turn off the motor, because it offends their sensibilities. Is this the kind of intolerant society we want to be?"
HOFFMAN AND the other Women of the Wall compare themselves to the daughters of the Biblical Tzelafhad, who demanded that Moses give them their inheritance. They also think of Rosa Parks, the African American woman credited with sparking the American civil rights movement when she refused to move to the back of the bus.
They have tremendous support abroad. Noted Jewish feminists and scholars who have formed the International Committee for Women of the Wall, which has thousands of members and has raised tens of thousands of dollars for legal fees. They are convinced that they are writing a critical chapter in Jewish history.
Yet Women of the Wall never became a popular cause in Israel. Only a few politicians, most notably former MK Professor Naomi Chazan (Meretz) and MK Colette Avital (Labor) ever provided any support or even interest. Few feminists took up their cause, and no civil rights group ever became involved in representing them in the courts.
Explains Hoffman, "The public and the media in Israel don't really understand us. The feminists and the liberals see us as religious, so they think we're reactionary or irrelevant to their causes. Most religious groups see us as radical and heretical, especially since in Orthodox Judaism, the overall climate is increasingly strict and intolerant.
"We're like turtles with wings," Hoffman says. "The public thinks we, as religious women, are supposed to be like turtles - quiet, slow, and dumb. As feminists, the public thinks we're supposed to fly, and not care about religion or spirituality. So they don't know what to do with us or how to support us."
Yet Puterkovsky says that religious spirituality, including use of religious garments such as tallitot, is growing among young religious Zionist women.
"The Women of the Wall are the pioneers - and although there isn't a lot of public acknowledgement, they have a wide, quiet, following."
In contrast, Hoffman notes that large segments of the Jewish population in Israel have become alienated from religion and religious symbols.
"The Kotel is not a synagogue, and it's not only a religious symbol," she says. "It's also a national, historic, and cultural symbol. And the secular and traditional publics are so disgusted and alienated, they simply abdicate any connection with these places and symbols."
Goldweisser agrees. "The Kotel belongs to us the haredim ," she declares. "The rest of the Jews will just have to respect our sensitivities."
Nasi believes that the Court decision has "saved the Jewish people. If the Court had accepted the idea of religious pluralism, it would have destroyed the solidarity of the Jewish people and the State of Israel. There is only one Judaism."
Hoffman believes that decisions such as this will tear the Jewish people apart. Haredim aren't the only Jews, but soon, non-haredi Jews won't be able to live in Israel. That's what Women of the Wall are about."
(Box) Arch enemies
It has taken Women of the Wall 14 years of up-hill legal, social, and political battles just to reach this plateau.
In December, 1988, during the First International Jewish Feminist Conference in Jerusalem, a multi- denominational group of approximately 70 women spontaneously decided to pray together, with a Torah scroll, at the Western Wall. Since no provision for Torah reading exists in the women's section, they brought a small folding table with them. Some of the women wore tallitot (prayer shawls). Enthused, they prayed out loud. The service was disrupted by curses and threats from ultra- Orthodox men and women.
Over the next few months, a group of Jerusalem women continued to pray regularly at the Wall. They were cursed, threatened, pushed, shoved, spat upon, and even bitten. Haredi men threw heavy metal chairs over the barrier dividing the men's and women's sections. Some women were injured and had to be taken to hospital.
At that time, there was no law forbidding women from praying at the Wall as they saw fit, but the police refused to provide them with protection. Several times, the women themselves, accused of "provoking the violence," were forced to leave. In April, 1989, four women petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court, asking for an order that would allow them to pray out loud with the Torah and to protect them from the continuing violence. The state was given six months to respond, and, in the interim, the Court issued a temporary injunction ordering the women not to pray at the Wall with tallit and Torah.
Since then, Women of the Wall, the ICWOW, the religious authorities, and the government have been involved in almost endless rounds of legal arguments. At least three different commissions that missed most of their court-appointed deadlines for filing their reports and usually did not allow the Women of the Wall to testify, tried to find solutions. The various committees offered various suggestions, including that the women could pray in the parking lot or at the south east corner of the Old City wall - which isn't even within the Old City, is unsafe for Jews, and does not require permission, because it is not a state-regulated site. A committee headed by Yaakov Neeman was the first to suggest Robinson's Arch as a solution.
At one point, as a result of the intense legal and political pressure, the women narrowed their demands to permitting a prayer group with a Torah to 11 hours a year, as long as the government would recognize and enforce their rights.
Finally, in May, 2000, a three-judge panel of the Israeli Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision in Women of the Wall's favor. In response, haredi lawmakers initiated legislation that would impose a seven-year prison sentence and monetary fine on women who wear prayer shawls, read from the Torah, blow a shofar, or put on tefillin (phylacteries) at the Western Wall. (The law passed its initial reading, but was struck down in committee.)
Although the Court's decision was unanimous, the attorney-general requested that the case be heard again by a nine-judge panel. This week, almost three years later, the Court handed down its reversal decision.
Frances Raday, professor of law at Hebrew University and chief counsel for Women of the Wall, notes that the written decision is based on internal contradictions. The explanations are written in the rhetoric of liberalism and human rights. Chief Justice Mishael Cheshin, writing for the majority, uses expressions such as "The Western Wall area is large and with a bit of goodwill, a space could be found for women." He even discusses why Robinson's Arch is inadequate and inappropriate for the women.
Yet he reaches a decision which upholds the haredi religious interpretation and denies other interpretations and human rights issues.
Hoffman believes that the court is bowing to haredi pressure.
"I think the Court was shaken by the demonstration in February, 1999, when 250,000 haredim demonstrated against the Supreme Court. On issues that they see as critical, the judges won't give in. But they seem to believe that women's rights, and especially women's religious rights, are expendable when it's politically expedient."
Says Raday, "This is not a courageous decision. I think that the Court is currying favor with the haredi public."
Yet haredi politicians remain concerned that the government will not implement the changes at Robinson's Arch, and that within a year, women will be legally allowed to pray at the Wall. Next week, they are planning to circumvent this possibility by re-introducing the legislation that would send a woman to prison for seven years if she violates the ultra-Orthodox regulations.
by Judy Klitsner
The Jewish Week - May 7, 2003
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=7873
With many accusations against rabbis, authorities and the religious establishment are slowly coming to grips with the problem.
Jerusalem — There is a growing public awareness in Israel of sexual abuse by rabbis, in part because of so many new cases being reported, including accusations against the recently elected Ashkenazic chief rabbi.
Unfortunately, these charges have come out in the press instead of being dealt with in a systematic and sensitive manner within the religious system. This points to the overall failure of the religious establishment to monitor itself and to take decisive action when complaints are brought.
As a result, the public is reading about it, becoming angry and increasingly aware of the need for some kind of action.
For years following the abuse I suffered at the hands of Rabbi Baruch Lanner, I tried in many ways to persuade religious leaders to stop his progress. When he was finally exposed and deposed (only because of the press), I began receiving calls from many quarters about abuses by other rabbis. I tried to help minimize the damage these rabbis could do by calling whomever I knew to put pressure on institutions that hired or promoted offending rabbis.
There were a few of us out there, people with extra sensitivity to this issue, and we learned to enlist each other's help whenever needed. Sometimes we succeeded; often we didn't.
I was greatly disturbed that an issue as serious as this was being addressed in this ad hoc way. Where were our leaders? Why was this not an issue of concern to all?
I finally decided to look for ways to address the problem in a more structured way. The immediate impetus was an expose some months ago in the Israeli daily Maariv on Rav Shlomo Aviner, the revered chief rabbi of Beit El and a central figure in the religious Zionist camp — "the rabbi's rabbi," the "holy of holies," as he has been called by his followers.
In the expose, two women accused the rabbi of creating emotionally intimate relationships with them. These relationships included his expressions of his love for them during regular late-night phone conversations, extracting details from them of their sexuality and promoting an unhealthy emotional dependence on him.
The women claimed they reported these problems to the highest echelons in the rabbinic establishment and were either passed along to other rabbis or told to keep silent and destroy any correspondence they had from the rabbi.
In response, the rabbinic establishment displayed a nearly unprecedented show of unity: on the very day the article appeared, my children (along with thousands of other children) returned from school with a letter signed by dozens of respected rabbis denouncing the "lies" that were reported by allegedly unstable, delusional women. Instead of calling for some kind of investigation, the community rallied around Rav Aviner and against his accusers.
Believing there had to be some way to defend these women and others like them, or at least to give them a chance to be heard seriously, I contacted the organization Kolech, a group of Orthodox feminists led by Chana Kehat, a religious scholar and activist. Fortuitously, I found that the group was beginning to organize itself around this issue. While discussing strategies for addressing the problem as a whole, a new case presented itself that put Kolech in the eye of the storm.
Several women called Kolech to complain about Rabbi Yitzchak Cohen, a former head of, and later a lecturer in, the midrasha at Bar-Ilan University, who they claimed sexually harassed them when they were students at the university some years ago. Despite strong pressure against Kehat, who was accused of pursuing a "feminist" agenda, the university appointed a committee, headed by a rabbi, which heard testimony from several women in the presence of the accused rabbi. In the end, the unambiguous ruling was to dismiss Rabbi Cohen.
He is still fighting the decision and claims openly that he is the victim of a slander campaign by the "feminists." Rabbi Cohen says the feminists want to push rabbis out of their positions so they can replace them. The Bar-Ilan commission found no basis to his arguments and ruled that Kolech was operating entirely in good faith.
While I found the charge about feminists repugnant, it is fair to ask why we are practically alone in seeking to stop this terrible phenomenon, with the help of the press.
I can say from firsthand experience that these women do not relish this type of activity and in fact would much prefer to be working on positive reforms in the religious world. There is a palpable sense of distaste, yet a solemn duty to follow up on complaints that no one else wants to touch. This is a job that rabbis should be doing themselves but are not, for various reasons (collegiality, politics, fear of airing dirty linen in public, not wanting to deal with "unsavory" topics, etc.)
The Knesset, to its credit, recently held a special session, chaired by Gila Finkelstein, on the question of sexual harassment in the religious community. Many educators, including heads of prominent institutions of Torah learning for women, were in attendance as speakers addressed a number of issues, including the need for acceptable guidelines in conduct between rabbis and students.
Partly as a result of all this, I have been working for a long time toward constructing a rabbinical ethics committee. It would follow the precedent of other professional ethics committees, such as those of doctors, psychologists and university professors, setting down clear sets of norms and guidelines for acceptable behavior. The committee would hear and investigate complaints in a sensitive and thorough manner, reach conclusions and act on them.
We are in the process of bringing together various women's organizations in the hope of getting a broad spectrum of leaders to support the plan. We then have to find rabbis who will agree to serve at the head of such a committee, to give it the religious stamp of approval. So far the rabbis we have approached are reluctant to be actively involved, but they recognize the need for such a committee.
Though there are signs that the community and its leadership are beginning to face the severity and widespread nature of the problem, clearly there is much work yet to be done. n
Judy Klitsner is an instructor of Bible at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem.
Links to 2 Rabbi Sholmo Aviner articles on allegations
November 2, 2008
The Awareness Center is looking for a volunteer to translate the following articles into English.
The rights of religious women / Voice that won't be
silenced
By Tamar Rotem
Haaretz - October 6, 2005
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArtVty.jhtml?sw=women&itemNo=485789
Fighting sexual harassment in religious society has put Chana Kehat, founder of the feminist Kolech group, on a collision course with the rabbis.
October 6, 2004 – (Haaretz) Late on the night before Rosh Hashanah, Chana Kehat went with her family to Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox Mea Shearim neighborhood to wish her parents well on the new year. The house was full of people. On weekdays, her father, ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Shlomo Fischer, one of the heads of the prestigious Itri Yeshiva in the city, lives on the yeshiva premises, surrounded by his hundreds of books. On Thursday nights and the eves of holidays, when he returns to his apartment, his children, his students and others who are welcome at his home make a pilgrimage to converse with him and consult him until the wee hours of the morning. For Kehat, the outgoing chairwoman of the religious feminist organization Kolech, the nighttime trip from her home in Gush Etzion in the West Bank, the bastion of religious Zionism, to the house where she was born on the edge of Mea Shearim is always a kind of symbolic journey.
More than 20 years ago she broke through the boundaries of the ultra-Orthodox world in which she had been raised and educated, and adopted a national-religious identity. But even though in those days, in the eyes of the ultra-Orthodox society of that time, joining the Orthodox Mizrahi stream was considered a kind of apostasy, she was not shunned. Her father understood her independent and inquisitive soul, relates Kehat. In any case, the national-religious public was not foreign to him, as to this day he is considered among that public to be an admired rabbinical figure. But once she was identified as a feminist, the standard-bearer in the struggle against sexual harassment in the religious community, her father's clout no longer stood her in good stead, neither in ultra-Orthodox society nor in religious society.
About a month ago she received the Volunteering Award at the president's residence for her work in Kolech. However, the woman who is identified with The Forum for Religious Women (the organization's full name), and was one of its founders, resigned a few weeks ago from her position as chairwoman. Kehat explains that she is tired from the endless maneuvering between raising six children, pursuing an independent career and running a social organization voluntarily since the day it was founded. Currently she is busy writing her doctoral thesis in the tranquil library of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.
However, in light of the huge storm in national-religious society and the heavy pressures with which Kehat has coped during the past two years following the exposure by Kolech of two cases of sexual harassment - the affair of Rabbi Shlomo Aviner and the affair of Rabbi Yitzhak Cohen, the head of Midreshet Bar-Ilan - her resignation has raised some questions. Has she lost her strength?
"Chana has paid a high personal and family price," says one woman who is a senior activist in the organization. "You can understand that she's tired."
Kolech is a threat to the rabbinical establishment. On the eve of Rosh Hashanah the newspapers Hatzofeh and Sheva as well as the weekly Torah portion bulletin Ma'ayanei Hayeshua published a rabbinical ruling by Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu calling for a boycott of the organization's popular weekly Torah portion bulletins, and against bringing them into synagogues. This is an extreme example of the growing hostility being directed primarily at Kehat.
`Persecutor of rabbis'
"Kolech has created a voice that is disturbing to the religious-Zionist establishment," says Prof. Chana Safrai of the Hartman Institute, who is observing the organization's activities from the outside. "They don't like Chana Kehat. They are not used to an assertive religious voice."
Kehat, who has closely accompanied the women and has made their cry heard in their public struggle, has been heaped with abasement, threat and harassment. She has been called a "persecutor of rabbis." According to her, there have even been pressures applied from above on the Orot Israel College for girls in Elkana, where she is a senior lecturer, to fire her. In order to soothe the ruffled tempers, this year she announced that she would be taking sabbatical leave. She wants to weigh her moves and see where she and Kolech are heading.
Kehat, 44, is a charismatic woman with a pleasant and mild temperament, who is considered to be the "mother" of the Kolech organization. "She expressed all my deepest wishes and those of many other women as a religious feminist woman," says Yaffa Rosenblum, one of the activists in the organization. "I identified with her radicalism."
In a public that is sensitive to social commands and obedient to the rabbis, she acts with true courage in the way that she expresses her opinions without fear of the rabbinical establishment, says the legal advisor of Kolech, attorney Rivka Shapiro.
"She is a woman who is Torah-observant and learned," says Rosenblum. "It is impossible to dismiss her or not to take her into account. Six years ago she initiated the establishment of a religious-pluralist school for her children - the Reshit School - in the settlement of Neveh Daniel where she lives. One-quarter of the students there are students with disabilities. In the spirit of religious feminism she also initiated a women's prayer quorum, that is active in the settlement on the Sabbath and on holidays parallel to the synagogue.
The world of Kehat's childhood was light years away from where she is today. Her mother came from a pious family from the Old Yishuv (pre-Zionist settlement in pre-state Palestine). Her father comes from a family of European rabbis. His father, Aharon, left religion, but several years alter returned and became very extreme. He immigrated to Israel and was adopted by Rabbi Chaim Sonnenfeld, the rabbi of the Eda Haharedit sect.
"My grandfather was a colorful figure," relates Kehat. In the 1929 riots he shot one of the leaders of the Arab gangs from a rooftop in Mea Shearim and killed him - a story of heroism that never made it into the Hebrew press. To earn his living he taught languages at the Rehavia Gymnasium, a secular secondary school, without giving up his zebra-striped caftan, in the style of Mea Shearim.
Kehat's grandfather taught his six children himself. His four sons became rabbis; Kehat's father is the supreme religious authority at the Itri Yeshiva. She describes him as autodidact who combines secular and Jewish philosophy in his thinking. Rabbi Fischer is influential in the strictly Orthodox national-religious ("hardalnik") stream. Prominent national religious rabbis were like members of the family in her parents' home.
Traumatic childhood
Kehat's mother raised her eight children and supported her husband, who studied Torah, by working as the principle of a Carlin Hasidut school. Kehat studied at her mother's school, where the classes were conducted in Yiddish. The family suffered from poverty, although as children she and her siblings were not aware of this, because in their environment "there were always poorer people."
The period of her childhood was traumatic. "I grew up in a place that was defenseless," she says. "Everything was wide open. Ultra-Orthodox girls were without a voice and they could be hurt easily. Their distress was not heard." Beyond their house there was the big, cruel world, she relates. "As children we would spend hours outdoors. In the area of the Ethiopian Church, near our house, problematic types, marginal youth, would roam around, who attacked children."
Looking back, she says, her vulnerable childhood was perhaps the reason for the establishment of Kolech. "Today I think that subconsciously I acted to create a movement that would protect women and girls and perhaps create a better world for my daughters."
She completed her high school studies at a Beis Yaakov seminary, a period that she describes in superlatives because, she says, "I stopped being afraid." At that time, too, she nurtured her desire to study and become educated and her father started to bring books about philosophy and ideas for her from his yeshiva library. After the seminary, she went to study at Bayit Vegan College, which belongs to a modern Orthodox stream. She completed her bachelor's degree in education and also taught there. Later she transferred to teaching at Midreshet Lendbaum for Girls. In recent years she has been teaching Jewish thought and Bible at Orot College and at Efrata College in Jerusalem.
At a certain stage she noticed that her father was trying to introduce her to outstanding students from the Merkaz Harav yeshiva. From this she understood that he was supporting her choice of path. In the end, she married Baruch, a rabbi who teaches at the Or Etzion Yeshiva.
Kehat, the only member of her family to have left the ultra-Orthodox community, describes the transition to the national religious world as a conscious decision. "I had a great desire to express myself religiously and to acquire education," she explains, "and in ultra-Orthodox society I was limited as a woman." She sees herself as continuing the learned stream to which her father belongs. She chose the subject of her research, changes in the idea of the Talmud Torah in the modern period, out of personal interest.
Surprisingly, Kehat has reservations about the phenomenon of the midrashot, study centers for Orthodox women. "There is indeed a generation of women who are learned scholars, but from a feminist perspective, there is still no real breakthrough," she says. "Many of the midrashot see their role as restoring to women the place that they deserve. However, many of them are headed by men. This is distorting. And this means that there is no self-definition for women. The fact that in the ulpana [religious secondary school for girls] my daughter is being taught by a very charming male teacher is unworthy in my eyes. With my own ears I have heard it said that there is something in the erotic tension that spurs the girls. How can a charismatic young man be a model for my daughter? This is an element in the construction of an oppressing identity, in which instead of a career woman, a young man is leading the young women." She adds that she also believes that in a place where men teach modesty and even the laws of menstrual purity, the girls are exposed to sexual harassment.
Gradual process
Kehat's evolved consciousness matured gradually. More than 10 years ago she taught at an institution at which there was a strong male hegemony. "I thought about my daughter. I wouldn't have wanted her to study at an inegalitarian place like that." In 1997, together with several women who were work colleagues of hers, she established Kolech. After its first convention, attended by approximately 100 people, the organization began to publish its weekly Torah portion bulletins. In Kehat's ultra-Orthodox family, the reactions to her activities were reserved: "My father was afraid of the social repercussions. He was worried that women's prayer quorums would arise, which is really happening in religious society."
More than 1,000 women are now members of the organization. "Women today are a unique and separate arena," says Kehat. "They have different viewpoints from the religious establishment of the yeshivas and the batei midrash [study houses]. The status of women has come on to the agenda of religious society." Her decision to take action on the mater of sexual harassment was one of the most courageous decisions that were taken by Kehat and the leadership of Kolech. "Along the way we had not only to break a taboo, but also to shatter a myth: that religious society is purer," says Kehat.
The reaction of religious society included the delegitimization of the women who complained and belonged to the strictly Orthodox national religious stream, and of Kolech, and the attempts by rabbis to confiscate the organization's bulletin at synagogues.
"The rabbis are simply afraid. Women's power is a real threat to them," Kehat says. "It was traumatic, she notes, to discover that 130 rabbis had signed a defamatory letter against the women who had complained about Rabbi Aviner. "We knew that we had been exposed to the dimensions of the horror; we knew that they had not complained without reason."
For a long period testimonies flowed into the organization from women who complained. "The rabbis' letter was an act of silencing and paralyzing that we though would have an effect on generations to come. Raising girls in a society like this is a disaster," comments Kehat.
Kolech began to take legal and public action concerning the complaints. In the second scandal, surrounding suspicions concerning Rabbi Cohen, Kehat's father was the only rabbi who took a clear stance. After he heard testimony from the women who complained, he wrote a harsh letter to Midreshet Bar-Ilan and ruled that a man like him must be allowed to teach women.
Nearly two years after the struggle began, a period during which the women who had complained about Rabbi Aviner suffered social alienation, one of them gave up in despair. The second one is still conducting a stubborn battle through the slow maze of the rabbinical courts. With respect to Rabbi Cohen, a compromise was reached and he resigned from his position.
Ethical code
Following these affairs, Kolech cooperated with an initiative of the world of the midrashot and the mainstream religious women's movement Emunah to formulate an ethical code for rabbis in the matter of sexual harassment, and to introduce regulations into the educational institutions. The task of formulating the code has been given to a committee in which three are prominent rabbis like Rabbi Yaacov Ariel of Gush Etzion and Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein of the Har Etzion Yeshiva. The formulation was supervised by Shapiro, Kolech's legal adviser.
"We have included in the code the new Israeli law concerning sexual harassment,' explains Shapiro. "The code instructs as to how to behave in order to prevent situations of sexual harassment, but also obligates institutions, educators and teachers to respond after an incident in a way that is compulsory under the law." The next stage, she adds, is introducing the actual regulations.
No replacement for Kehat has been appointed yet, but it is clear that a new era is beginning in her organization. In the past, everything was run by the force of her charismatic personality. Now Kolech is in a phase of formal organization and the opening of branches, of which there are already five. Its current arena is sharpening the struggle on behalf of women whose husbands will not grant them divorces or are missing. Kehat says that she cannot help but feel cautiously optimistic at the sight of the organization's conferences, filled with young, opinionated women.
Kehat: "I founded Kolech thinking about my four daughters. I want them to have self-respect and for them not to experience the insult of the ezrat nashim [part of a synagogue reserved for women]. Successful women do not need to feel second class in their very own communities, the place that is most dear to them. Being a religious woman is not necessarily preparing food for the Sabbath."
She believes that it is not necessary to come to terms with the social segregation that traditional religious society has created. In other words: The gates must be open to women.
Rabbi Aviner: Divorcees are just as valuable, if not
more so
By Kobi Nahshoni
YNET News - February 3, 2008
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3502095,00.html
Rabbi of Bet-El speaks out against the `evil stereotype' attached to divorcees in Judaism, calls on followers `not to judge anyone by past marital status'
In an article recently published in the Rosh Yehudi (Jewish Mindset) pamphlet, the Rabbi of Bet El and spiritual leader of the Religious Zionist movement, Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, called on Orthodox Jews to change their deeply entrenched prejudices against divorced women, and to start judging people based upon their character rather than their past marital status.
"Divorcees are just like all other women, they do not have horns," the rabbi noted. "As a matter of fact, these women are probably more worthwhile because of their previous experience with married life."
Aviner went on tostate that divorcees have "feelings and emotions like all other women, and are just as G-d fearing, dependable and worthy as their never married counterparts.
"I have no idea where all of the evil stereotypes regarding divorcees originated," said the Rabbi. "These women do not have horns on their heads; in fact they probably have a far broader and more mature outlook on life."
Addressing Orthodox men's reluctance to marry divorcees, Rabbi Aviner stated that "one must naturally take the time to find out whether there is some character flaw in the person in question that brought about the divorce, but as a general rule you should always take the time to assess your future spouses' character and nature before marriage, whether or not they were previously married."
Divorcess deserve second chance
Strong faith, fear of G-d, and dependability, explained the Rabbi, are all traits that one can most definitely find in a divorcee. "Divorcees do not fall short of other women in this respect, and their feelings and emotions must also be respected."
In that vane, the rabbi stated that divorced Orthodox women should be allowed a second chance at marriage, not only with a widower or fellow divorcee but even with a single man.
"One must not marry right off the bat like a blind fool," advised the Rabbi. "A couple who marries must be well matched and compatible. That being said, "we must judge each individual based on their character rather than their past marital statu."
Rabbi Aviner: Women permitted to kill rapists:
In fiery newsletter, rabbi encourages women
to resist any form of sexual harassment
By Kobi Nahshoni
YNET News - March 2, 2008
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3513901,00.html
Fight off your attacker: Women attacked by rapists are permitted
to kill them to ward off the attack, Beit El Chief Rabbi Shlomo Aviner ruled
in a newsletter published Saturday.
"In either word or deed, fight him off. Yell out loud so that everyone can hear you. If he touches you, slap him. If he attempts to do worse, and there is no other choice, you can kill him...yes, kill him," Rabbi Aviner wrote.
The rabbi also noted in his article that his advice falls well within the guidelines of Israeli law, which is also on his side. "A young man broke into a woman's apartment and wanted to have his way with her. She killed him and the court ruled that in this instance she had the right to use reasonable force in order to defend herself, and that her actions were justified."
In an article entitled "Don't Let Men Harass You" the Rabbi urges women to resist all forms of sexual harassment, either in word or deed, and advises women "to not allow men to treat them like an object for their own use and pleasure."
"Don't be afraid to fight back against harassment, even if it is in the workplace and even if it involves a superior," writes the rabbi. "Women's organizations will gladly be there for you and help you fight back. You will not be on your own."
That being said, Rabbi Aviner cautions complainants that the road that lies ahead for them will not be a simple or easy one. "The harasser will not give in easily. He will say that you asked for it, initiated it, enticed and seduced him with provocative clothing, etc. Don't worry, however, women's groups will help you through it."
In the latter part of his article Rabbi Aviner cites statistics that indicate that there are over 50,000 cases of sexual abuse in Israel among women between the ages of 25-40. Moreover, 25% of religious women report that they have been sexually harassed. "Most were harassed by someone they knew, most chose to remain silent..." stated the Rabbi.
What is the rabbi's solution for this widespread problem? "We should put 50,000 men in jail, so that others see, learn and realize that when a woman says `no' it means just that."
Rabbi Aviner: Child abuse must be
reported
By Rabbi Levi Brackman
YNET News - May 22, 2008
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3546788,00.html
Prominent religious-Zionist leader lashes out at failure to inform authorities of such acts 'in order to have mercy on the abuser,' says 'first of all we must have pity on the helpless child'
Kobi Nahshoni
"When children are battered, whether as part of sexual abuse or just being beaten, anyone aware of this must inform the authorities," Rabbi Shlomo Aviner of Beit El and one of Religious Zionism's prominent leaders says in an article on the weekend in the "B'Ahava Ub'Emuna" synagogue bulletin.
"A child is helpless and defenseless," the rabbi argues, noting that the law and the Halacha (Jewish law) see a person who fails to report of what he knows as bearing responsibility.
Under the headline "It's a duty to report, at all costs!", Rabbi Aviner says that "the desire not to report in order to have mercy on the beater or the abuser might be a desire frequently derived from sincere motives, but first of all we must have pity on the helpless child. The battered child's fate comes first."
In this context, the rabbi refers to data pointing to the fact that among the religious public, physical and sexual abuse is more severe than among seculars.
"It's not because the religious are more violent," he says, "but because it is more prevalent among the religious public to refrain from reporting and only do so when the situation becomes unbearable. By that time the child suffers greater damage."
'Child's fate is in our hands'
According to Rabbi Aviner, Jewish law views child abuse as extremely severe, and Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, leader of Israel's Lithuanian non-Hasidic haredi Jews, has even ruled that a battered child should be removed from his home even if he is adopted by a non-Jewish family.
And who is responsible for reporting abuse cases? "According to Jewish law, the first and definite fidelity duty of anyone who knows is towards the battered child," Aviner wrote, adding that "from a legal point of view, if the person who knows is a professional in the field, for instance a social worker or a psychologist, and he fails to report – he may receive a jail sentence of half a year."
He admitted, however, that there were cases in which there is was obligation to inform the authorities.
"If the beater or the abuser is aware of his problem and is willing to receive the proper therapy, and in addition meets his commitment and goes to therapy, and is supervised by responsible elements, only in such a case there is no need to report... In all other incidents, with no exception, one must report and fast. The child's fate is in our hands!"
May 23, 2008
Back in 2002, serious allegations were made against Rabbi Shlomo Aviner of sexually harassing women both verbally and physically. These behaviors are considered to fall under the catagory of "clergy sexual abuse". Like in many other cases, those who tried to speak out where shunned and made to look as if they were crazy.
Rabbi Shlomo Aviner continues to be the senior rabbi and a Rosh yeshiva (dean of a seminary) in Jerusalem, Israel. In the last few months Aviner has been publicly speaking out against child abuse as a PR campaign to correct his image. This needs to be stopped!
Due to the seriousness of the past allegation, Rabbi Aviner's actions should be scene as endangering the safety of adolescent girls and adult women, who might see him as a "safe person." The Awareness Center is demanding that Rabbi Aviner undergo a psychological evaluation conducted by a mental health professional approved by our organization prior to him becoming a spokes person on the issue of child abuse.
Please write letters to the editor of the following Israeli newspapers to ensure they are aware that their actions of quoting this alleged sex offender may lead to another woman being harmed.
YNET News
Editor in Chief
click here to send letters to the editor
Jerusalem Post
Telephone 972-2-531-5666
David Horovitz, Editor-in-Chief - davidh@jpost.com
Amir Mizroch, News Editor - amirm@jpost.com
Haaretz
972-3-512-1212
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Last Updated: 05/23/2008
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