"Give a Divorce," Attackers Yelled As They Beat Men, Victim Testifies in Lakewood Rabbi Trial

By MaryAnn Spoto
NJ.com
March 2, 2015

http://www.nj.com/ocean/index.ssf/2015/03/brooklyn_man_testifies_he_was_victim_in_lakewood_r.html

A Brooklyn man, testifying in the trial of a Lakewood rabbi accused of ordering beatings to extract Jewish divorces, described how he and his roomate were awakened and beaten for hours.

The testimony offered in the seventh day of the federal conspiracy trial of rabbi Mendel Epstein, did not directly link the religious leader to participating in the Aug. 22, 2011, attack, but it connecedt his son, who is also charged in the indictment, to the attacks that federal prosecutors say were orchestrated to force the men into giving their wives divorces.

However, the Brooklyn man, Menachem Teitelbaum indirectly linked the rabbi to the incident when he said he heard one of his attackers mention the words "Epstein" and "father."

Testifying to a jury of eight men and eight women before U.S. District Judge Freda Wolfson in Trenton, Teitelbaum said he had been asleep in his Brooklyn basement apartment for nearly an hour after returning from his job at a local grocery store when he was awakened by a man who punched him in the face.

At different times during the attack, two or three men were on top of him, trying to tie his arms and legs. One of the men pushed his head through the wall of his bedroom, Teitelbaum said. He said that when he screamed for help, one of the men stuffed dirty socks into his mouth.

When he wasn't screaming, he could hear other men beating his roommate, Usher Chaimowitz, who had been asleep in the other bed in the room, and ordering him to grant his wife a Jewish religious divorce, known as a get, he told Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Wolfe.

He said the attackers knocked loose four of his teeth. When he asked why they were beating him, he said, one of his attackers told him, "Woe is the villain; woe is his neighbor."

"They were calling out all the time 'give a get. Give a divorce to your wife,'" Teitelbaum testified through Hebrew interpreter Ruth Kohn.

He said he knew a woman was in the room because while he was on the bedroom floor, he saw legs with women's stockings and shoes. And one of the attackers yelled Teitelbaum to be stopped from screaming because "she can't hear," Teitelbaum said.

After beating him in the bedroom, Teitelbaum's attackers dragged him, with his arms and legs bound, into the kitchen, where they cut off his pajamas and covered his head and his lower body with towels, he said.

"I heard one person saying 'call your father.' And then within another second or two seconds, I heard another voice say, Epstein, call your father,'" Teitelbaum said.

Teitelbaum identified the younger Epstein as the man who punched him in the face. He sad he picked him out from a series of photographs that FBI agents presented to him last year.

Teitelbaum said the beating lasted about two hours, after which he and his roommate were able to free themselves.

Toward the end of the beating, one of the men forced him to drink what tasted like alcohol and said "Mazeltov, get," Teitelbaum said.

In identifying photographs of his and Chaimowitz's injuries, Teitelbaum gave confusing testimony about how each man was untied. He initially said the attackers untied Chaimowitz's arms and legs before they left, but then he later said Chaimowitz, with his legs still bound, managed to reach the kitchen to first untie Teitelbaum's arms and legs.

And in the start of his cross-examination of Teitelbaum, Epstein's attorney Henry Mazurek tried to cast doubt on the reliability of that identification. In his questioning, Mazurek tried to suggest that Teitelbaum was influenced into identifying Epstein by David Wax of Lakewood, a friend of his uncle, in order to reduce the potential prison sentence Wax is facing for beating that occurred in his home.

Epstein, a prominent rabbi who specializes in divorce proceedings, is on trial in federal court in Trenton along with his son, David "Ari" Epstein, and two other rabbis, Binyamin Stimler and Jay Goldstein, on conspiracy and kidnapping charges that grew out of a federal undercover sting.

Mazurek is continuing his cross-examination of Teitelbaum on Tuesday