UNITED STATES
Times of Israel
David Cheifetz
Last week, I visited Israel and met up with my friend Manny Waks. Manny has become a leading spokesperson for sexual abuse victims in the Jewish community. I too came out publicly three years ago as a victim of sexual abuse at an Orthodox Jewish sleep away camp in the United States when I was 13-years-old.
Manny and I spent the day on the beach in Tel Aviv soaking up the rays of the sun, cooled by a comfortable breeze. Afterwards, we retired to the lounge in the Sheraton until late in the evening.
So what did Manny Waks and I talk about in the many hours that we spent together?
In addition to laughing and joking around, we had serious discussions about the whole “awakening” across the various sectors of the Jewish community worldwide around the topic of sexual abuse, particularly of minors. We spoke of the parallels between the very different communities in which we grew up: Me, in the yeshivish and, later, Modern Orthodox communities; and Manny, in the Chabad community in Australia.
One of the core commonalities that we discussed is the fundamental hypocrisy and intellectual dishonestly of much of the institutionalized rabbinic and lay leadership in their failure to adequately address the topic of sexual abuse.
The rabbis describe themselves as messengers of Torah, as the keepers and “Guardians of Halacha.” Even when there are halachic differences, the rabbis stand by the rules that they teach, the Rules of the Divine. And these are indeed the Rules of the Divine, for in the mainstream view of tradition, at least in mainstream Orthodoxy — including Modern Orthodoxy and the Chareidi communities — Torah is indeed Divine. Torah is MiSinai, given at Mount Sinai, and rules not captured in the Torah itself are themselves Halachot LeMoshe MiSinai, laws handed down by the Divine to Moses on Sinai, and passed down orally throughout the centuries.
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