Cold Case of Pedophile Rabbi Protected by Mesira
ABC news ^ | Oct. 11, 2006 | ROXANNA SHERWOOD
(Edited and excerpted)
Unfortunately, at this time I do not have the energy to find the pertinent quotes in the Talmud that relate to this article. Since we have Rabbi’s in this piece weighing in and speaking to what is really going on, this will have to do for the time being.

Posted on 10/12/2006 5:51:33 AM PDT

Retired New York Police Department Detective Patricia Kehoe still remembers a phone call she got more than 20 years ago, from a person making allegations that a Hassidic Rabbi was sexually abusing children in his neighborhood.

"I never received a call like that in my whole career in the New York City Police Department. Never," Kehoe told Cynthia McFadden in a recent interview.

"I'll never forget it because unfortunately it was my birthday, November 21 1984. I was working in the Brooklyn Sex Crimes squad and I received an anonymous call from a male who started to say that there was a Rabbi and gave the name and he was abusing people on this block," she said.

Rabbi Avrohom Mondrowitz, as he called himself, lived on a tree-lined block in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn. Patricia Kehoe and her partner, Sal Catafulmo, went out to the neighborhood where Italians and Hasidic Jews lived side-by-side.

At one of the first addresses they tried, she says a resident told her "Everyone knows Rabbi Mondrowitz. He's good to all our children. He buys them bicycles and takes them away on weekends and things."

That might sound like a recommendation, but not to Kehoe. "With that information I got very scared," she said. Kehoe's background in an NYPD pedophilia squad taught her to recognize the signs of pedophilia. "Pedophiles have a pattern with children to get their confidence and send their so-called love, you might say, and buy them things," she said.

What she heard from the children themselves only confirmed her gut feelings.

"We brought them in without their parents," Kehoe said. "They started to tell us, 'The rabbi is our friend. He takes us away,' and things like that. As the questions became more difficult for the children -- 'Did anything ever happen? Did anything sexual ever happen? Are you aware of it happening to anyone else while you were there?' -- they all broke down and cried, each one separately."

According to Kehoe, the children painted a clear picture of abuse. Kehoe says the children told her that the Hassidic Rabbi had fondled them, had sexual relations with them, and that he had fondled others in front of them.

Apparently the self-proclaimed rabbi -- Mondrowitz had no formal rabbinical credentials -- was counseling young Orthodox boys in the basement office of his home in Borough Park.
The reporter here has a complete lack of understanding as to the Talmudic requirements of becoming a Rabbi. The base requirement is memorization of portions of the five books of Moses, and portions of the Talmud and to be able to recite those verbatim. Anyone that can master these things can become a Rabbi. We have recently posted an article concerning the requirement for becoming and Imam is the memorization of the Talmudic Koran and being able to recite it verbatim.

Kehoe and her partner immediately obtained a search warrant for his home. When they got to the address, there was no answer at the door, so Kehoe climbed through the basement window. The alleged pedophile and his family had fled and his house was completely vacant but for what Kehoe says there were a hundred files left behind of Orthodox Jewish boys that Mondrowitz had been counseling in his basement office.

Kehoe and her partner reached out to all of the Orthodox boys' families, she says, but no one would talk.

"They were members of the Hassidic community, and as we found out through the investigation -- all the (Talmudic) rules in the Hassidic community. (That prevented any member from speaking to gentiles about a Jew much less speaking against a Rabbi.) And one of the things is that if one of them is ever sexually abused, whether it be by a pedophile or raped, (According to the Talmud such a person can not ever) get married (Because they bear permanent defilement all their days) if this would ever found out or brought to anyone's attention," she said.

The only victims that cooperated with the investigation were Italian. They were neighborhood Gentile boys who trusted the Rabbi because he bought them gifts like bicycles. Not a single Orthodox Jewish boy or their parents would talk to the police. Because to do so in the Talmud is a just cause for “killing them.” but these days they instead are excommunicated from the faith. Having personally grown up in a Jewish community I heard from Jews of their hatred of the fanaticism of Hassidic Jews, I heard if one fell from the faith or married a gentile – the Hassidic Jews would hold a funeral and at a grave site dropped in a photo or item of the child and buried it. And there after they were ever forbidden to speak to that person

The statements of four Italian boys, aged 11 through 16, were the basis for the indictment against Avrohom Mondrowitz. He was facing eight counts of sexual abuse in the first degree, endangering the welfare of a child, and five counts of sodomy in the first degree.

The allegations against Mondrowitz were shocking to those who knew him. (Again the meaning of Hassidic Jews being shocked by the allegations of a Rabbi is completely beyond the reported because in the Talmud the words of all gentiles whether it would be by 2-3 eye witnesses as prescribed by the law of Moses, or by civil gentile law enforcement officers or by a civil gentile court are completely disallowed. The shock is that any gentile that are utter filth and scum would dare to lay charge against any holy child of Israel much less defame the holiest of all a Rabbi.)

Rabbi Herbert Bomzer (One of these who was “shocked” by this accusation from gentiles) has been a fixture among ultra-Orthodox Rabbis in Brooklyn for more than 50 years. He is president of the Flatbush Rabbinical Board, composed of nearly 100 rabbis. He hired Mondrowitz to counsel boys at a school for Orthodox boys in the late 1970s. (Here this Hassidic Chief Rabbi is carefully to speak no evil of a fellow Hassidic Rabbi to Gentile filth and scum.) "He was very effective, so much so that toward the end of the school year when they were planning the graduation exercise the student reps requested that I should invite him to be the guest speaker at the exercise," Bomzer said.

Young boys were equally impressed with the charismatic (All Rabbis are treated as “charismatic rock stars” of the faith – for according to the Talmud their word is virtually law and above scripture.) older man. Mark Weiss was one of them. At 13 years old, growing up in Chicago, Weiss says he was having trouble fitting in and reconciling his orthodoxy with the outside world. In the summer of 1980, his father sent Weiss to New York to receive counseling from Mondrowitz.

(This perverse Rabbi) "He had kind of a sporty little car, (Things like this are forbidden in the Talmud even to Rabbis) and he had this really cool sound system in there. (This is also forbidden) And right off the bat I remember being just completely overwhelmed with just like how cool this guy is," (In other words this child was impressed with this Orthodox Rabbi’s worldliness in the face of all these things being banned in Orthodox Judaism and the Talmud) Weiss said. "He took me out to eat. He took me out to lunch, to dinner. He took me to an amusement park. (Also banned) He took me sightseeing here.(Also banned – because the sightseeing was to monuments and parks built by and honoring gentiles.)"

The lure here to children rebelling against their Hassidic heritage and desirous of the things of the gentile world around them – all the more drove them to the oasis of that which this pedophile Rabbi surrounded himself with.

Weiss then 13 being completely naive trusted the man so much that with his family away on a trip to the mountains, and he having already been sent to the Rabbi’s house to stay, did not hesitate when Mondrowitz invited him to sleep in his own bed with him.

We will pass up the details of all that this Rabbi did with this but note here that, at age 18, some five years later (Summer 1985) Weiss ran into this same Rabbi, still operating in this same Hassidic Jewish community, that had stated to two police officers a year earlier “That they were shocked at the allegations laid against him.” Reading between the lines this Rabbi did not serve any hard time due to “insufficient evidence.” Though not ment9ioned in the article either, there is a high probability that a flurry of false witnesses were sent out to dispute and bring into question the statements of the Italian children that accused this Rabbi And The statements made by the Jewish children without parents or Rabbis present was claimed to be obtained under duress.

Weiss said his father told him Mondrowitz was a frum man -- a religious Jew.

The article then traces Weiss’s odyssey with his parents that could not believe his Charge against a “Frum” a practicing orthodox Jew and of his father’s great fears if word of this leaked out for reasons previously stated – so his parents sent him off in silence. He moved to an orthodox community Denver and married, being haunted by these things. At age 39 he read in a conservative Jewish publication an event in New York City for survivors of sexual molestation by members of the orthodox Jewish community.

He was ecstatic and immediately booked a flight to New York. "It was going to be this night in which survivors were to be able to meet with leaders of the Jewish community and they were to be able to address and to tell their stories essentially and to be heard for the first time, really, in a public forum in the right wing religious community," he said. But the event did not unfold as he had imagined or hoped it would.

It was very clear, unfortunately, that the rabbis who were there and the leaders of our Hassidic community didn't have any plans to do what Weiss had envisioned

"None of the survivors got to say a word. Any questions that were to be asked were written down on these little index cards and they cherry picked the most benign questions -- And subsequent comments that were given by the panel of rabbis had nothing to do with Orthodox Rabbi’s and others in the Hassidic community having performed sexual molestation and other acts whatsoever," he said.

When the evening was over, Weiss said he was devastated.

"Anybody who was really a victim and really had gone through some horrible experiences was really shell-shocked. We sort of all walked around like we had just survived a plane crash."

The situation is so widespread that in Orthodox Judaism they have created an organization called J-Safe an organization to help Orthodox Jewish victims of “domestic violence and sex abuse.”

One of the weapons of Orthodox Jews is the talmudic concept of Lashone Harah which are the biblical Hebrew words for making oral complaints as "gossip or slander, however according to the talmudic prohibition against maligning a Talmudic Jew or against speaking ill of a Talmudic Jew," Even when the allegations being made are proven true, to speak against a practicing fellow Orthodox Jew much less a Rabbi it is prohibited Dratch said.

There's another biblical concept at play when dealing with sex abuse and domestic violence in the community, he Dratch said. "It's called Mesira. And that's a prohibition on reporting and complaints in writing fellow Jews to gentile authorities under any circumstances,"

The mesira edict was published in a Yiddish-language Orthodox Brooklyn newspaper called Der Blatt in the wake of a case of a 6-year-old Orthodox Jewish boy who had brought allegations against a rabbi who had been tutoring him. The case was brought before the Brooklyn district attorney, who ultimately disbanded the grand jury on the case.

Sociologist Amy Neustein, an Orthodox Jewish woman who studies sex abuse in the community and who says she has spoken to members of the victim's family, said the Hebrew publication that ran under the title "Severe Warning and Prohibition" drove the child's family out of town.

"Rabbis sign on to this edict about Mesira stating that he who informs to the Christian authorities can be murdered at the first opportunity," Neustein said. "Well of course that sends such a chill to the family that they pick themselves up with their children, from Brooklyn and they ran out of the county." (This article is not stating that this occurred in some Radical Islamic community in Iran or Sudan, it is talking about things that are taking place right now in the US in every Hassidic Jewish Community. These are the same people many Charismatic Tele-Evangelists support as being the purveyors of true Judaism – and as we have stated in another article this could not be more untrue. – These worship and obey the Talmud above every word in scripture. These are every bit as fanatical in their corrupt and evil beliefs as Islamic radical Imams are.)

And because of this "Victims are very hesitant to come forward," Dratch said. "Number one in Orthodox Judaism is the denial of the community of any Lashone Harah and Mesira. So there is a great fear that whatever they say along with whatever proof or witnesses they have that they are not going to be believed. – And then retaliated upon for defacing Judaism before the gentiles.

"Secondly, it's -- I'll use a wonderful Yiddish word -- it's called Shanda, the shame of it all. And individuals are afraid of what the impact of their report will be on themselves personally and on their family and on the extended family," he said. As the orthodox community will exert great pressure upon all family and relatives to repudiate any one who dares to report any such accusation.

Rabbi Mondrowitz, now 58 years old, has been living comfortably in Israel since 1985, and the retired NYPD detective said she believes he has been amassing new victims.

In the wake of recent allegations against another Brooklyn Orthodox Rabbi, several more Orthodox Jewish men alleging that they too were sexually abused by Mondrowitz have come forward to tell of the abuse that they say has haunted them.

Michael Lesher, an attorney who represents six alleged victims of Mondrowitz, including Mark Weiss, said it is similar to what has happened with the Catholic Church.

"The comparisons are obvious, but I would say at the same time that what we are seeing in the Jewish community is in some respects worse because it's more institutionalized," he said.

Rabbi Mark Dratch agrees.

"As an outsider to the Catholic Church, it seems to me that there is an infrastructure or a hierarchy and they have the mechanism, they really do have the mechanism to effect systemic change in a much easier way in a much more efficient way and a much quicker way because of that hierarchy," Dratch said. "In the Orthodox world, we don't have such a hierarchy. There is no pope and there are no levels of responsibility and answerability."

Dratch said there is no way to really gauge how widespread the problem is in the community, "because of this conspiracy of silence."

A Newsday article on the same case reported

"One woman, whose son was called to testify about an alleged instance of abuse, said that extraordinary pressure was placed both on her family and on the family of the alleged victim. "I had rabbis coming by. They threatened we'll have curses in our family. It might sound silly to you, but it was very frightening," said the woman."

Another quote on this case is as follows:

The Israeli government reportedly refused extradition of Mondrowitz because "Oral and anal raping of boys among the acts of which Mondrowitz is accused weren't crimes by Israeli standards." - The Village Voice, July 25th, 2006

In our article entitled the Talmudization of Israel and the Church we cited with nauseating detail the Talmud’s exemption of rape and incest of children and the protections it affords the criminals who would do such acts.