Lakewood rabbi wore 'criminal hat' when arranging forced divorces, prosecutor says

By Maryann Spoto
NJ.com
April 13, 2015

http://www.nj.com/ocean/index.ssf/2015/04/lakewood_rabbi_wears_criminal_hat_when_arranging_f.html

Lakewood Rabbi Mendel Epstein arrives at the Federal Courthouse as closing arguments in the case get underway. Other defendants in the conspiracy and kidnapping trial are, Rabbi Jay Goldstein, Rabbi Binyamin Stimler and David Epstein (Mendel Epstein's son)

Rabbi Binyamin Stimler one of the defendants in the conspiracy and kidnapping trial of Lakewood Rabbi Mendel Epstein arrives at the Federal Courthouse as closing arguments in the case get underway.

David Epstein, the son of Lakewood Rabbi Mendel Epstein arrives at the Federal Courthouse as closing arguments in the conspiracy and kidnapping trial of Rabbi Epstein get underway.

Closing arguments in the conspiracy and kidnapping trial of Lakewood Rabbi Mendel Epstein get underway at the Clarkson S, Fisher Federal Building and United States Courthouse. The defendants in the are Rabbi Mendel Epstein, Rabbi Jay Goldstein, Rabbi Binyamin Stimler and David Epstein (Mendel Epstein's son)

TRENTON —In his own words, Rabbi Mendel Epstein told an undercover FBI agent that he wore two hats as a religious leader - one rabbinical and one criminal.

That statement, captured in video surveillance in 2013, was played for jurors on Monday as they hear federal prosecutors' and defense attorneys' summations of eight weeks of testimony in a trial accusing Epstein and three others of conspiring to force husbands into granting their wives religious divorces.

"Mendel Epstein is telling you right here what he is - he's a criminal," Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Wolfe told jurors after playing a segment of video in which Epstein claimed to describe the two roles he played in his Orthodox Jewish communities in Lakewood and Brooklyn.

"Don't confuse the defendants' religious beliefs with criminal acts," Wolfe said toward the beginning of her nearly four hours of closing arguments. "You're here to judge Mendel Epstein for acts he did while wearing his criminal hat."

Epstein, a prominent rabbi who specializes in divorces and has written books about the rights of Jewish women, has acknowledged helping to convince recalcitrant husbands grant religious divorces - known as gets - to their wives so that the women can remarry some day.
But federal prosecutors say Epstein, 69, also went to the extreme measures of arranging the kidnapping and torture of men who outright refused to grant divorces.

Epstein is on trial before U.S. District Judge Freda Wolfson 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.

Wolfe opened her summations by playing for the jury of eight men and eight women a portion of a conversation Epstein had with undercover FBI agents posing as a woman seeking a divorce and her brother.

"What we're doing is basically going to be kidnapping a guy for a couple hours and beating him up and torturing him and then getting him to give the get," Epstein is heard saying on the video.

When the undercover agents ask for more details, Epstein tells them that the victims are "jumped, put down and hooded" before they're handcuffed and beaten.

And with an electric cattle prod, "you put it in certain parts of his body and in one minute the guy will know," he said on the video.

Wolfe said Epstein in that conversation laid out the blue print for previous kidnappings and beatings he arranged. She reminded jurors about the plight of Israel Markowitz, who in February testified that he was abducted outside a store in Lakewood, blindfolded, thrown into a van, beaten, tortured and then tossed with his hands bound behind his back into the woods after agreeing to grant his wife a get on Dec. 1, 2009. Markowitz told jurors his attackers used a stun gun on various parts of his body, including his genitals.

After looking through four different photo arrays, Markowitz identified the driver of the van and the man who "boot-stomped" him as David Epstein.

In the seven minutes that Mendel Epstein's lawyer had to start his summations on Monday, attorney Robert Stahl disputed federal prosecutors' claim that those similarities created for his client a "signature crime."

Stahl said prosecutors failed to produce evidence of a cattle prod, a baseball bat, plastic zip ties, handcuffs and other implements the defendants allegedly used on the men.

"Where are they?" Stahl asked jurors. "The government wants you to believe that every time one of these (beatings) happens, that it must be Rabbi Mendel Epstein and his crew."

Attackers employed similar methods for the Oct. 17, 2010, beating of Yisrael Meir Bryskman, who testified he was ambushed at a home in Lakewood where he was blindfolded, bound and beaten until he agreed to a religious divorce, Wolfe told jurors.

In that case, Bryskman identified only the homeowner, Rabbi David Wax, as one of his attackers, but Wax, facing life in prison after pleading guilty to kidnapping Bryskman, implicated Epstein and his son in the incident.

In all, the elder Epstein is accused of arranging five kidnappings, including the Oct. 9, 2013, federal sting operation.

Goldstein is alleged to have participated in four of them as the "scribe" who wrote the official get after the beatings.

And Stimler, an alleged witness to the get, is accused of participating in the 2011 beating of another Brooklyn man, Usher Chaimowitz, and the attempted kidnapping related to the federal sting.

Closing arguments continue on Tuesday with defense attorneys getting to argue their interpretation of the testimony.