UNITED STATES
The Times of Israel
JUNE 24, 2016
Michael J. Salamon
In the last few days, following the ruling by a Beit Din in Israel, a ruling that received support from a number of prominent rabbis in Israel and the United States who represent all shades of Orthodoxy, several highly personal articles have appeared. These intimate articles describe the pain inflicted upon them by a Rabbi Meir Pogrow who was supposed to be their educator, mentor, and spiritual advisor but was in effect their abuser. The Beit Din ruling was clear: “It is forbidden,” the Beit Din wrote, for him to have any contact with women and women were warned to have no contact with him; women should not even go to his Torah website and were instructed to avoid any contact with a woman who was and seems to still be his booking agent.
The implication was clear in their ruling that this woman solicited for him and in the Beit Din’s words “functions as his agent for sin, and in this way they have knowingly (ensnared and) lowered girls into the lowest spiritual depths”.
Pogrow, often referred to as a brilliant and charismatic Torah, scholar taught at Yeshiva University High Schools in Los Angeles, Michlahlah seminary in Jerusalem, and at the Kollel of Aish HaTorah in Jerusalem and Austin, Texas. He first appeared on my radar about eight years ago when Riva (not her real name) a woman in her early twenties came to therapy following some time at the seminary in Israel. She was anxious, depressed, and afraid that she could never get married or ever trust men. She described a relationship with a rabbi at the seminary who was challenging but also extremely demanding. She complained, “He got into my head somehow and it messed me up.” As we worked through Riva’s anguish and concerns, she described how a man of prominence used his position and his intellect to groom her, manipulate her, and ultimately have her do his bidding. With time, she told me his name.
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