Deciphering the Latest Joint Rabbinical Court Ruling on the Meisels Seminaries Scandal

Frum Follies
March 17, 2015

https://frumfollies.wordpress.com/2015/03/17/deciphering-the-latest-joint-rabbinical-court-ruling-on-the-meisels-seminaries-scandal/

Hindy Ullman

Rabbi Meir Kahane, Principal Chedvas Bais Yaakov

Principal of Pninim as of Aug 2014

The enlarged joint beis din issued a ruling on the Meisels seminaries which was posted on the Daas Torah blog on 3/11/15 with the misleading title, “Joint Beis Din – Israeli and Chicago – issues psak regarding former Meisels seminaries that all is well and that no one needed to be fired!”

I ask my readers to forgive me for taking six days to respond. But a travesty of this magnitude deserves a full fledged report and rejoinder, not just a nasty swipe.

Further below is a full translation of the entire document posted on Daas Torah. But, first some observations and cautions.

Eidensohn’s claims notwithstanding, the ruling criticizes some staff and did some fancy footwork to exonerate others. Mrs. Hindy Ullman was a tough one to exonerate because the Beis Din received evidence she was directly told of an abused student and she dismissed it out of hand characterizing the student as not credible.

Ullman also offered up the absurd defense that she, the employee, forced Meisels to leave the seminaries. The Beis Din wrote:

It is clear that once it became known, the administration acted quickly, with determination, and with great efficiency to investigate what occurred. This led to the removal of the offender/abuser from the physical environment (by immediately sending him abroad) and from continuing in the field of education).

We are led to believe that the employee, Mrs. Ullman, had this much power over her boss, Meisels.

Ullman was stripped by the Beis Din of some of her roles and put under supervision for a year and half. It is possible that the intent is to have her resign while not declaring that she was fired.

In discussing her and Rabbi Meir Kahane they also state they are limiting the consequences because they “suffered embarrassment.” There is no basis in Jewish law or logic for denying culpability because the enabler is embarrassed, especially not when they are embarrassed to have been found out.

Meir Kahane wrote an outrageous letter to students all but promising them they would bring the messiah if they did not talk about the Meisels scandal. I detailed this travesty in my post, Kahane’s Folly.
Mrs. Shulamis Soloff is the Principal of Keser Chaya. Before that she was the house mother for Pninim, the seminary where Meisels was Principal. The dorm had a 10 p.m. curfew at which time everyone was supposed to be checked in. Soloff was often there till midnight and beyond. Meisels brought students back and forth well past midnight into the wee hours of the morning. They were known as coffee dates but actually were often drives to secluded parking spots in hi “California van” with its California plates. Once parked, he talked, groomed, groped, and worse.The Beit Din heard testimony about all this and how she witnessed these comings and goings and was repeatedly urged to confront obvious violations of din yichud (the rule against unrelated men and women being together in private). Instead of acknowledging this testimony and then trying to rebut it, the ruling circumvented these inconvenient facts by only talking about what happened in Keser Chaya.

They did something similar for Rabbi Boruch Dovid Simon, now the Principal of Pninim. He was let off the hook because he wasn’t the principal at the time (“Adjudicating this case is superfluous. This is because the administrator at the time of these acts was the offender/abuser himself [Elimelech Meisels]. The current administration was promoted from among the staff as a result of the offender/abuser’s resigning/firing.”)

The ruling conveniently ignored the fact that Simon was part of that administration under the then-Principal and arch-abuser, Elimelech Meisels. They ignored testimony by Michal Ben Baruch (aka TruthSeeker) that she approached Simon about Meisels’ misconduct. Simon said he couldn’t do anything now but he expected to eventually become principal and then he would stop these goings on. After the Beis Din accepted Mrs. Ullman’s claim that she could force her boss to leave, why didn’t they expect as much of Simon?

The ruling does not mention any evidence the court heard about other staff who ignored evidence of Meisels abuse.

This ruling never acknowledged the suffering of the students who were assaulted nor did it apologize to them. The majority of the court was less concerned about comforting the victims or punishing the culprits than with keeping the business intact.

Since the cat was already out of the bag they had to make a show of thoughtfully evaluating the evidence. They had to contend that Elimelech Meisels, like Lee Harvey Oswald, was a lone shooter and none of the other staff could have known, should have known, or did know, let alone admit that many on the staff tried to cover up his abuse, once victims, parents and onlookers complained to them. This ruling is a shameful exhibit of staff and judges who “have eyes, but do not see, have ears but do not listen.”

Apart from those of the judges, only one name appears in the ruling. It is not Meisels, Soloff, Ullman, Simon or Kahane. It is Rabbi Avrohom Chaim Levin. Levin is nogeiah bidavar (has a conflict of interest); he is a close, close friend of Elimelech Meisels’ father. They were chavrusot (study partners) for years, back when they were students in Telshe (Cleveland). That is why he recused himself from the original deliberations of the Chicago Special Beis Din and his place was taken by Rabbi Zev Cohen who was ordinarily the administrator/corresponding secretary of that court. Levin is flattered with flowery quotes. (E.g., “to the Rosh Yeshiva it is said: “Days onto the days of the king may you add, etc.”[Psalms/Tehillim 61:7]). This is the same Rabbi Levin who wrote letters defending Rabbi Yisroel Bodkins from allegations of molesting yeshiva boys, but turned tail rather than be deposed in court proceedings and face prosecution for perjury. Levin was the rav with the chutzpah to criticize a ruling by the Chicago Beis Din when he recused himself because of a conflict of interest.

This ruling does not even claim that Meisels is truly and finally severed from control of the seminaries. Back in September, 2014, one of the dayanim, Rabbi Gedalia Dov Schwartz, wrote, “In a July 30 conference call, Rabbis Tzvi Gartner and Chaim Malinowitz stated to the Beis Din [in Chicago] that the publicly-reported purchase of the seminaries was subject to as-yet unfulfilled contingencies.” The present ruling continues to hedge when it states, “The situation today is that the amuta and all the institutions under its umbrella are being transferred.” It is written in the present tense. I am sure they would have used the past tense if it had already been accomplished. They concede as much when they write, “Practically, the issues have been drawn out and have yet to come to a resolution. The beis din is convinced that the situation will be resolved in the best way possible, and is giving it more time.”

This ruling defies the usual norms for an orthodox rabbinical court ruling by stating that five of the seven members will be issuing dissenting opinions {See footnote 5}. Conventionally, a rabbinical court accepts the majority decision and all sign without dissenting. The dissenting opinions are not included and it is not even clear if they have been written.

At times the ruling states “See explanations for more on this,” but then those explanations are nowhere to be found in the document. It is not clear if these explanations have been written yet or whether they will ever be shared. It even transpires that their previous ruling had an undisclosed set of additional notes which they allude to when they write about Rabbi Boruch Dovid Simon and refer to “note 7 of the partial psak din.” It is impossible to know if these missing explanations indeed bolster the claims in the ruling, or are convenient places to hide yet more of the embarrassing complications they are trying to gloss over.

Many of my readers have started consoling me for losing after putting up a good fight. I don’t see it that way. I think of Mordechai telling Esther, “If you hold your peace at this time, then relief and deliverance will arise to the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish” (Esther 4:14).

In Australia the failings of orthodox leadership were revealed by the Royal Commission and several rabbis involved in cover ups were forced to resign.

In the US, Jewish women in seminaries get more protection from the US Department of Education which enforces the Title IX provision that campuses must do their part to prevent sexual harassment and violence. Because of Title IX, Touro College will not restore accreditation to these seminaries until Meisels is truly severed, other staff are fired or demoted, and there is clear evidence that the institution truly grasps its failures and has changed. This Beis Din ruling falls well short of Title IX requirements. The US Department of Education has its flaws. But then grownups understand that Esther was compromised as well. But she is our heroine because she was not afraid to challenge an all-powerful king who had already discarded Queen Vashti during an alcoholic binge.

All seven rabbis on this Beis Din are learned, very learned. Mordechai was learned.

Nothing in the Torah suggests that Esther was learned. But she had a gut, a heart, and a spine. She grasped the character and foibles of the wicked and figured out how to void their force. She was successful because she was willing to risk her job, even her life. She took heed when she was warned that if she dodged her job, she and her father’s house would perish.

The day will come when orthodox institutions are safe. The only question is who will make them safe and who will perish, which institutions will reform themselves and which ones will shuttered by criminal prosecutions, civil lawsuits, and declining enrollment.