In Ritual Bathhouses of Judaism, Children Are Systematically AbusedBy Christopher KetchamRabbiNuchem Rosenberg—who is 63 with a long, graying beard—recently sat downwith me to explain what he described as a “child-rape assembly line”among sects of fundamentalist Jews. He cleared his throat. “I’m going tobe graphic,” he said.A member of Brooklyn’s Satmar Hasidim fundamentalist branch of OrthodoxJudaism, Nuchem designs and repairs mikvahs in compliance with TorahLaw. The mikvah is a ritual Jewish bathhouse used for purification.Devout Jews are required to cleanse themselves in the mikvah on avariety of occasions: women must visit following menstruation, and menhave to make an appearance before the High Holidays such as RoshHashanah and Yom Kippur. Many of the devout also purify themselvesbefore and after the act of sex, and before the Sabbath.On a visit to Jerusalem in 2005, Rabbi Rosenberg entered into a mikvahin one of the holiest neighborhoods in the city, Mea She’arim. “I openeda door that entered into a schvitz,” he told me. “Vapors everywhere, Ican barely see. My eyes adjust, and I see an old man, my age, long whitebeard, a holy-looking man, sitting in the vapors. On his lap, facingaway from him, is a boy, maybe seven years old. And the old man ishaving anal sex with this boy.”Rabbi Rosenberg paused, gathered himself, and went on: “This boy wasspeared on the man like an animal, like a pig, and the boy was sayingnothing. But on his face—fear. The old man [looked at me] withoutany fear, as if this was common practice. He didn’t stop. I was soangry, I confronted him. He removed the boy from his penis, and I tookthe boy aside. I told this man, ‘It’s a sin before God, a mishkovzucher.What are you doing to this boy’s soul? You’re destroying this boy!’ Hehad a sponge on a stick to clean his back, and he hit me across the facewith it. ‘How dare you interrupt me!’ he said. I had heard of thesethings for a long time, but now I had seen.”The child sex abuse crisis in ultra-Orthodox Judaism, like that in theCatholic Church, has produced its share of shocking headlines in recentyears. In New York, and in the prominent Orthodox communities of Israeland London, allegations of child molestation and rape have been rampant.The alleged abusers are schoolteachers, rabbis, fathers, uncles—figuresof male authority. The victims, like those of Catholic priests, aremostly boys. Rabbi Rosenberg believes around half of young males inBrooklyn’s Hasidic community—the largest in the United States and one ofthe largest in the world—have been victims of sexual assaultperpetrated by their elders. Ben Hirsch, director of Survivors forJustice, a Brooklyn organization that advocates for Orthodox sex abusevictims, thinks the real number is higher. “From anecdotal evidence,we’re looking at over 50 percent. It has almost become a rite ofpassage.”Ultra-Orthodox Jews who speak out about these abuses are ruined andcondemned to exile by their own community. Dr. Amy Neustein, anonfundamentalist Orthodox Jewish sociologist and editor of Tempest in the Temple: Jewish Communities and Child Sex Scandals,told me the story of a series of Hasidic mothers in Brooklyn she got toknow who complained that their children were being preyed on by theirhusbands.In these cases, the accused men “very quickly and effectively engagethe rabbis, the Orthodox politicians, and powerful Orthodox rabbis whodonate handsomely to political clubs.” The goal, she told me, is “toexcise the mother from the child’s life.” Rabbinical courts cast themothers aside, and the effects are permanent. The mother is “amputated.”One woman befriended by Dr. Neustein, a music student at a collegeoutside New York, lost contact with all six of her children, includingan infant she was breastfeeding at the time of their separation.Rabbi Rosenberg inspects a ritual purification bath, known as amikvah. In 2005, he witnessed a young boy being raped inside a similarbath.Seven years ago, Rabbi Rosenberg started blogging about sex abuse inhis community and opened a New York City hotline to field sex abusecomplaints. He has posted appeals on YouTube, appeared on CNN, and givenspeeches across the US, Canada, Israel, and Australia. Today, he is thelone whistleblower among the Satmar. For this he is reviled, slandered,hated, feared. He receives death threats on a regular basis. In Yiddishand Hebrew newspapers, advertisements taken out by the self-described“great rabbis and rabbinical judges of the city of New York” havedenounced him as “a stumbling block for the House of Israel,” “a publicrebuker and preacher of ethics” who “persists in his rebelliousness” andwhose “voice has been heard among many Jewish families, especiallyyoung people in their innocence… drawn to listen to his poisonous andrevolting speeches.” Leaflets distributed in Williamsburg and BoroughPark, the centers of ultra-Orthodoxy in Brooklyn, display his beardedface over the body of a writhing snake. Corrupt Informerreads one of the leaflets, followed by the declaration that RabbiRosenberg’s “name should rot in hell forever. They should cut him offfrom all four corners of the earth.”When Rabbi Rosenberg wants to bathe at a mikvah in Brooklyn to purifyhimself, none will have him. When he wants to go to synagogue, none willhave him. “He is finished in the community, butchered,” said a fellowrabbi who would only talk anonymously. “No one will look at him, andthose who will talk to him, they can’t let it be known. The pressure inour community, it’s incredible.”The powerful men—and it is worth noting that this community isregulated by men only—who govern the world of ultra-Orthodox Judaismwould rather their adherents be blind in their faith, their eyes closedto the horrors Rabbi Rosenberg is exposing. Like the Catholicestablishment, the rabbinate seeks to cover up the crimes, quiet thevictims, protect the abusers, and deflect potential criticism of theirinstitutional practices. Those who speak out are vilified, and thefaithful learn to shut their mouths. When the father of theseven-year-old boy whom Rabbi Rosenberg rescued from the Jerusalembathhouse showed up to collect his son, he couldn’t believe his son hadbeen raped. Trembling, terrified, he whisked his son away to get medicalhelp, but was still too scared to raise a formal complaint. Accordingto Ben and Survivors for Justice, “The greatest sin is not the abuse,but talking about the abuse. Kids and parents who step forward tocomplain are crushed.”As for Rabbi Rosenberg, when he voiced his concerns to the rabbinate in Israel, he was brought up on charges by the mishmeres hatznuis,the archconservative Orthodox “modesty squad,” which regulates, oftenthrough threats of violence, proper moral conduct and dress in therelations between men and women. The modesty squad is a sort of JewishTaliban. According to Rabbi Rosenberg, the rapist he caught in the actwas a member of the modesty squad, which charged him with theunconscionable offense of having previously been seen walking down astreet in Jerusalem with a married woman. “But it’s OK to molestchildren,” he adds.The abuse and its cover-up are symptoms of wider politicaldysfunction—or, more precisely, symptoms of socially disastrouspolitical control by religious elites.“This isn’t a problem about a few aberrant cases or an old-fashionedcommunity reluctant to talk to police about sexual matters,” saidMichael Lesher, a practicing Jew who has investigated Orthodox sex abuseand represented abuse victims. “This is about a political economy thatlinks Orthodox Judaism with other fundamentalist creeds and with aspectsof right-wing ideologies generally. It’s an economy in which genuinereligious values will never really rise to the top, so long as they’retied to the poisonous priorities that elevate status and power over thebasic human needs of the most vulnerable among us.”Michael, who is completing a book on the topic, noted that the infamousRabbi Elior Chen, convicted in 2010 in what was arguably Israel’s worstcase of serial child abuse, is still defended in public statements byleading ultra-Orthodox rabbis. Among other legal and moral crimes, therabbi forced his victims to eat feces, claiming that this cruelty wasnecessary to “purify” the children he abused.According to Ben, the ultra-Orthodox community has never been asrepressive as it is today. The repression, as he describes it, stemsfrom the burden of having too many children. Huge families areencouraged: every child born to a Hasid is seen as “a finger in the eyeof Hitler.” Ben also told me that the average family size amongWilliamsburg Hasidim is nine, and that some families include more than15 children.Mikvah Israel of Boro Park, one of the many mikvahs in Brooklyn that no longer accept Rabbi Rosenberg.Families saddled with an increasing number of children soon enter into acycle of poverty. There is simultaneously an extreme separation of thesexes, which is unprecedented in the history of the Hasidim. There islimited general education, to the point that most men in the communityare educated only to the third grade, and receive absolutely no sexualeducation. No secular newspapers are allowed, and internet access isforbidden. “The men in the community are undereducated by design,” Bensaid. “You have a community that has been infantilized. They have beentrained not to think. It’s a sort of totalitarian control.”The rabbis, dominating an ignorant and largely poverty-stricken flock,determine the fate of every individual in the community. Nothing is donewithout the consent of the rabbinical establishment. A man wants to buya new car—he goes to the rabbi for counsel. A man wants to marry—therabbi tells him whether or not he should marry a particular bride. Asfor the women, they don’t get to ask the rabbi anything. Their place isbeneath contempt.Michael told me that current Orthodox leadership, accruing wealth fromthe tithes of subservient followers, is “drifting to theright, politically as well as religiously.” Many rabbis in New York Cityhave taken up the banner of neoliberalism. “Every English-languageOrthodox publication I know embraced Romney during the 2012 elections,decried national health insurance, blamed liberals for bribing the lowerclasses,” he said. “In Orthodox society, just as in America at large,the financial mismatch between the elite and the rest of us is ominouslylarge.”Michael also notes that the problem is not confined to the extremists.“The same patterns of victim-blaming, covering up, idealizing the rabbisso that cover-ups aren’t even acknowledged, are found all across thespectrum of Orthodoxy,” he told me. “The Orthodox left was shamefullyslow to react to Rabbi Baruch Lanner’s abuse or to the similar case ofRabbi Mordechai Elon.” Rabbi Lanner, a former New Jersey yeshiva highschool principal, was found guilty in 2000 of sexually abusing dozens ofteenage students over the decades of his tenure. Rabbi Elon, who hadpublicly denounced homosexuality, was convicted last August on twocounts of forcible sexual assault on a male minor, following severalyears of reports of his abuse of young boys.“I have children come to me with their parents, and the blood is comingout of the anus,” Rabbi Rosenberg told me when we met. “These arezombies for life. What are we to do?”This of course is the key question, and no answers are forthcoming.Michael holds out little hope that the situation will change. “IfOrthodox institutions continue on their current trajectory,” he said,“I’d say things could get worse before they get better.”A few weeks after our interview, Rabbi Rosenberg was walking throughthe Williamsburg section of Brooklyn when an unidentified man rushed upbehind him, tapped him on the shoulder, and threw a cup of bleach in hisface. He went to the hospital with facial burns and was temporarilyblinded. Such is the measure of justice among the Satmar that aonce-respected rabbi, now amputated from the community, should findhimself chemically burned on a street in a neighborhood considered holy.Later Rabbi Rosenberg told me a story of being surrounded by young boysin Williamsburg. The boys cursed him, laughed at him, threatened him,and spat at him. He wondered how many of them would end up molested.More from this issue: