The Awareness Center, Inc. is the Jewish Coalition Against Sexual Abuse/Assault (JCASA)
The Case of the Students of Ner Israel Yeshiva in the 1950's
Baltimore, Maryland
This page is dedicated in the Memory of Israel David Fishman
February 21, 1938 - Jun 14, 2006
(Israel is buried at Montifiore Cemetery in St. Albans, Queens in a plot very near The Lubavitcher Rebbe)
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Email Groups for the Awareness Center This link will bring you to a list of different mailing lists offered by The Awareness Center. We offers several different email groups,which include our general mailing list, press-releases, Jewish survivors of childhood sexual abuse, Parents of children who were molested, Family members of sex offenders, etc.
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Also see:
Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Jewish Survivors of Sexual Violence
Recidivism of Sex Offenders (U.S. Department of Justice: Center for Sex Offender Management)
Cases Connected to the Feinstein - Tendler - Weinberg Families, and or Ner Israel of Baltimore
Re: video of Trembling Before god
Date: Saturday, August 16, 2003 1:12:12 PM
What I sent you, and am resending, is but a fragment of my totally story. It does not include the physical incest by my brother (now a respectable teacher in a yeshiva day school in Cleveland) not the psychic or emotional incest by my father and mother (very, very complicated and even more difficult to handle) -- nor the emotional abuse and abandonment. And I almost forgot to mention the s-- I got from my grandfather who lived with us from time to time I was 5.
I can appreciate that you need to protect yourself legally, but could you at least keep the initials in? I have edited it to reflect only the initials. And, of course, since I have nothing to hide, please include my full name. You have my total permission (I guess you would have eliminated the name of my brother too, no? A pity indeed. But you could you at least include his initials?)
I am so glad that you going to post it, however. With all the inner work that I have done, and the tremendous strides that I have in fact made (my life has turned mourned 180% in the last 13 years of so--finally) it would still be vitally important to hear from others that what I endured those many years ago fall within the category of sexual and emotional abuse.
Feel free to include (all of part of) my comments above in your posting.
A guten shabbos!
Israel Fishman
by Israel Fishman
August 16, 2003
Israel Fishman was interviewed in the movie "Trembling Before God", in which he comes out as an incest survivor.
Please note the following is graphic. The article below tells of the experiences of an incest survivor that occurred over 50 years ago.
The following took place in 1953. I am not quite 15 years old and the youngest student at the Ner Israel Rabbinical Academy in Baltimore Maryland, which was then located at 4411 Garrison Boulevard.
When I arrived a few months earlier I had been the second youngest student, but the boy who was then the youngest was caught in flagrant delicto with another boy and was tossed out. The boy's father, a rabbi from Richmond, Virginia was the mashgiakh (kosher supervisor) for the large FFV Baking Company there. He must have come in to stay for that particular Sabbath, as traveling on that day is strictly forbidden.
So on that sacred day he approached the head of the Yeshiva, Rabbi Jacob L. Ruderman, who was sitting at the front of the large bais medrash (study hall) pleading with him to give his son a second chance. In front of all the students and teachers, Rabbi Ruderman screamed at the boy's father that he could not talk with him because the matter was absolutely closed, and that the boy must leave immediately. Meanwhile I am living in constant fear that either somebody in the yeshiva will find out all my dark secrets, or that God will surely punish me most severely for my unmentionable, abominable sins.
All the time, however I can't stop thinking of the beautifully gorgeous, angelic looking, red-haired and freckled boy, Hochberg from Hartford, and what might have been. I still shudder when I recall the
recent Friday night when a whole bunch of fellow students came to visit me in my dorm room when I was sick. It was a Friday night there were no lights on in the room and all sat or stood around in total darkness. Hochberg, though, sat on my bed, and put his hand under the blanket and groped me. I was so scared, because I was worried that it was an entrapment, and I remained absolutely soft. This is the yeshiva environment in which the following event is taking place.
I have just shut the lights leaving my room for the study hall's evening session. It is a weekday and therefore we have study sessions every evening. Before I actually leave the room I feel somebody's hand on my shoulder who gently but firmly leads me back into my room. The lights remain turned off. His name is NTL. He is an older bokhur, that is, one of the senior students who took responsibility for the moral training of the younger students on a one-to-one basis.
He leads me to the bed where he sits very closely besides me and holds me very tightly around the waist. He is stronger and more powerful than I am. He is also an older bokhur that you have to respect and listen to. I was immobile and frozen.
He tells me that he could tell from the lines under my eyes that I was masturbating (which I already knew was a grave sin, that is the masturbation and not the lines under the eyes per se!), Before long I am confessing to him all the other evil things that I had been doing, including the sex that I had had for many years with my older brother, Calmin. I tell him that it had gone on for nearly six years and had only ended when we separated a few months earlier, with him going to seminary in Cleveland and I, as I said earlier, coming to Baltimore. I feel so relieved in unburdening myself to someone who is so interested in me.
Through the whole long evening (and it feels that it it a very long evening) I am so scared and afraid, feeling that I dare not make a single move, let alone excuse myself to take a pee, which is getting more and more urgent.
I continue to remain in NTL's close embrace, although by now we are standing against a closet door with one of my hands squeezed against the doorknob. By now I don't know what is hurting more, my hand against the doorknob, or having to pee so urgently. But still I dare not move. I am trapped.
NTL makes me promise that I will never, ever, urinate standing up (because doing that I would be touching myself and that might very well lead to masturbation). I must also immediately train myself to sleep only on my side, and not on my belly or back (in order to avoid having a nocturnal emission, which, of course, is also sinful). I am to tell him every time that I transgressed, even if it was just a matter of having a wet dream. Finally, he tells me that I am so indebted to him for what he is doing for me that, even if I had a million dollars, I would have to give it all to him.
I have no awareness of how long I am with NTL; only that my hand is hurting and that I need to pee so badly. I am so afraid of him and I am so overwhelmed by this evening. No one has ever talked to me at such length and especially helping me to overcome my sinful desires.
I have no idea or comprehension where this evening's experience and my relationship with NTL will undeniably and inescapably take me, and what tragic and painful consequences I will have to endure down the road. But all that is in the future (or at least four or so months away.).
2001
http://tremblingbeforeg-d.com/subjects/index.html
Israel takes on a healing and preaching role in the "Big Knish Tours" he leads through Brooklyn's Hasidic neighborhoods of Boro Park and Williamsburg to help him come to terms with his flight from a difficult childhood there. He has not seen his father for over twenty years.
February 21, 1938 - June 14, 2006
By Carl Navarro
Born in Westerly, Rhode Island on
February 21, 1938.
Beloved life partner of Carl Navarro since 1974.
Isarel Fishman was President of the Park Slope Food Coop since 2005 and had served on its board of directors since 1998. He worked tirelessly to maintain the Coop's stability and further its growth.
Graduated City College B.A. magna cum laude and Columbia University M.S with honors. He overcame incredible hardships to become a unique and beautiful person. Brilliant and creative mind, an ethical and spiritual person, lover of all things Italian, of the Yiddish language and Ashkenazik culture, and of Chazzanuth (cantorial music) of the Golden Age, avid race walker, passionate and skilled vegetarian cook.
At various periods in his life he was a rabbinical student, professional librarian, massage therapist, and businessman.
His prophetic passion for social justice led him to found, in 1970, the first gay professional organization in the world -- the Task Force on Gay Liberation (now known as the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Roundtable) of the American Library Association. In 2001 he was honored by this group who decided to rename one of their two annual Stonewall Book Awards as the "Israel Fishman nonfiction book award."
Also in 2001 he appeared as one of the featured subjects in the acclaimed documentary, Trembling Before G-d, a film dealing with lesbian and gay Orthodox and Hassidic Jews.
The world is a better place because he walked on this planet. His physical presence and the blessings he bestowed will be sorely missed by all who were fortunate to have been in his presence. The memory of the righteous is indeed a blessing.
Contributions in his memory can be sent to the Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender Round Table of the American Library Association's Endowment Fund.
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Last Updated: 07/20/2006
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