Rabbi Matis Weinberg: Scion of a noted rabbinic
family denies charges, says accusers are troubled.
by Elli Wohlgelernter and Gary Rosenblatt
Jewish Week - April 20, 2003
Jewish Week - April 20, 2003
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| Allege Sexual Predator - Rabbi Matis Weinber (Now and Then) |
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| Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetsky, enabler of sex offenders |
Some of the victims say they are seeking rabbinic
endorsement to pursue their charges in criminal court or in an Israeli din
Torah (religious tribunal), or both.
Rabbi Weinberg, whose books on the Bible and Jewish
thought are widely read and praised, denies all the charges, which span a
25-year period. He told The Jewish Week he did not believe any rabbinic panel
was taking place and he expressed frustration at the allegations made against
him.
Rabbi Weinberg noted that while he was physically
demonstrative to his students, often hugging them, it was never in a sexual
way.
"I don't get a hard-on" from such encounters," asserted
the rabbi, who is married and has a large family.
Among those scheduled to testify May 1 is "Sammy,"
a 20-year-old former student at Derech Etz Chaim, a small Jerusalem yeshiva
for post-high school American students with which Rabbi Weinberg, 56, is
loosely affiliated. He has been a rebbe to several of the rabbis teaching
at the school and is considered its spiritual mentor.
Sammy and several other men have spoken at length with
The Jewish Week on the condition of anonymity.
Sammy said the rabbi kissed him on the lips at least
once, and climbed into his bed when the two were alone and shared a room
during an excursion in Israel this winter. He said he had been close to Rabbi
Weinberg and his family and had been a frequent Shabbat guest at their home
during his time as a student at the yeshiva, looking up to the rabbi as his
religious guide and leader.
At various times when they were alone, the rabbi would
"lift my eyeglasses and kiss me slowly and purposefully on my eyelids or
my ears, or pinch me affectionately above the waist," Sammy said, noting
that these gestures made him feel uncomfortable. "But he was my rebbe, and
part of me felt almost flattered" at the attention, he added.
He said it was only later, after denying to himself
that any misconduct had taken place, that "I realized I had been lying to
myself."
Sammy later told a rabbi he trusted and his parents
about the incidents.
On another front, Yeshiva University severed its
affiliation with Derech Etz Chaim in February for its ties with Rabbi Weinberg
and for allegedly seeking to downplay the complaints.
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| Rabbi Yosef Blau |
The YU newspaper, The Commentator, ran a lengthy piece
in March about the school severing ties because of "compelling evidence"
of a rabbi associated with Derech Etz Chaim having "a history of allegedly
sexually abusing and engaging in cult-like behavior with his students." The
article did not name the rabbi.
Officials of the Israeli yeshiva and several students
complained that YU acted hastily and unfairly.
Two of the eight rebbes at Derech Etz Chaim are said
to have left their posts over the controversy. One, Rabbi Avraham Schorr,
gathered his students at his home one morning last month to tell them he
was leaving because of the scandal, according to someone who was present.
Rabbi Schorr did not return calls from The Jewish Week.
He was one of many people related to the case who chose not to discuss the
matter.
Reluctant To Speak Out
This story has come to light slowly, in fits and starts,
over a period of months, hindered by a reluctance of the alleged victims
and their supporters to speak out publicly. They express fear of condemnation
for chilul Hashem (desecration of God's name), and personal embarrassment
or recrimination in the Orthodox world for criticizing a major scholar who
has reached countless Jews in positive ways through his lectures and writings.
"Why should I be victimized twice?" one former student
said, noting that he would be shunned in the Orthodox community were he to
come forward with his name.
At the same time, these critics say they want Rabbi
Weinberg's alleged misdeeds to be widely known so that no student in the
future will be harmed.
Dozens of supporters of Rabbi Weinberg have written
or called The Jewish Week over the last several weeks to vouch for his reputation
as a brilliant, charismatic scholar with a sterling character and to decry
what they consider to be a campaign to besmirch him.
Ari Hier of Los Angeles, a student of Rabbi Weinberg
in Santa Clara, Calif., in the 1970s, describes his rebbe as a warm, caring
and innovative educator.
"He is unconventional in his teaching," Hier said,
noting that it was easy to see why the deeply conservative establishment
of the yeshiva world would look askance at a rebbe who quoted pop music lyrics
or cited Hollywood movies in his lectures and writings.
Indeed, Hier compared Rabbi Weinberg to the Robin Williams
character in the film "Dead Poets Society," a teacher who prodded his students
into deeper understanding of literature, and themselves, by being outrageous
at times.
Rabbi Weinberg, in an interview with The Jewish Week,
used the "Dead Poets" analogy as well. One thing that he, his supporters
and critics agree on is that he is a maverick. But while his defenders portray
him as a brilliant, caring rabbi, his critics say he was authoritarian and
manipulative, emotionally and psychologically, in addition to the sexual
charges.
Persistent Rumors
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| Ner Israel Rabbinical College and High School |
"My approach is to be open, open to criticism, open
to questions," Rabbi Weinberg said in the interview. He described the Kerem
method as "experimental" but said he taught "with utmost transparency."
Rabbi Weinberg settled in Israel after he left Kerem.
There were persistent rumors at the time that the rabbi was forced out suddenly.
Some say it was because of financial problems at the yeshiva. Others insist
that Rabbi Weinberg was found to have made sexual advances toward students
and that an oral agreement was reached where the rabbi agreed to leave the
country and stop working with young people and in return, no charges would
be filed against him with civil authorities.
Rabbi Weinberg said the charges are baseless and that
he made the move because he always intended to live in Israel.
While he initially denied all charges of any kind of
abuse as "absurd," the rabbi did acknowledge, when questioned, that he had
slapped a Kerem student hard, repeatedly, in the mouth, drawing blood in
front of a large group of students. He said the student had asked to be
"embarrassed publicly" because he had violated the school ban on smoking,
and Rabbi Weinberg agreed, reluctantly, to punish him physically.
"I agree it's strange," he said. "I'm more mature now
and I wouldn't do this now.
"I was a creative teacher," and "it worked," he added.
Rabbi Weinberg also admitted that he had once extinguished
a burnt cigarette in the palm of a student's hand.
But he was adamant about there being "no sexual
connotation" to the frequent hugs and kisses he gave students, noting that
this was California in the '70s, and that "I am a physical person, that's
just the way I am." He said "it makes me feel ugly and violated to take something
warm and caring and turn it into something furtive and disgusting."
Asked if he ever kissed students on the lips, as some
have charged, he responded: "How long?"
When questioned about specific incidents of alleged
sexual contact, Rabbi Weinberg volunteered the names of the former students
and portrayed them as psychologically troubled. He said that Sammy, the
20-year-old, and his family had a "troubled history" and that his own children
worried that Sammy was "like Neil," a character in "Dead Poets Society" who
commits suicide.
Rabbi Weinberg charged that Sammy has been "emotionally
abused by rabbis and others who have an agenda" in seeking to make sexual
charges out of innocent gestures, like rubbing the young man's back or shoulders.
A rabbi close to Sammy said the young man is part of
"a normal, stable and loving family," and that while he knew Rabbi Weinberg
and respected him, he has come to believe that Sammy is telling the truth.
Rabbi Weinberg said that another former student from
his Kerem days who has made allegations against him was "a problematic young
man" with a "violent" nature and was not credible.
That student, "Adam," now 40, told The Jewish Week
that when he was 17, Rabbi Weinberg led him by the hand to his private study
in the yeshiva, "pushed me on the bed or sofa and literally got on top of
me, grappled me all over my body as a man would with a woman he was passionate
about. I went into a catatonic shock. He fell asleep and slept on me for
hours."
Adam said that afterward, "it was as if nothing ever
happened," but he felt "an implicit sense" that he had lost favor with his
rebbe.
"I wasn't there for him physically so he wasn't there
for me emotionally, and there was a sense of abandonment," Adam said. Most
damaging, he said, was that "he was playing with my head. That was most
inviolate."
Act Of Closure
Contemporaries and former classmates of Adam tell similar
stories of alleged abuse from Rabbi Weinberg, whom they revered as a rebbe.
"It's very vivid in my mind," said "Avraham," recalling
the incident that took place in 1981, when he was 15, in a back room in the
dormitory that was reserved for Rabbi Weinberg.
Avraham said the rabbi said he wanted to talk to him.
"He started unbuttoning my shirt, kissing my chest and stuff, started unbuttoning
my pants, and he started to fondle me. I basically freaked out and I left."
He said he later remembered feeling that the rabbi
"was making this out to be ... some type of spiritual or religious experience."
"Yitzchak," another former Kerem student, recalled
three incidents of alleged touching that continues to haunt him more than
20 years later. The first took place in the dormitory in May 1982 when the
rabbi came in and fondled the youngster's private parts, he said, while making
"guttural, love-making noises."
Yitzchak said he was "totally in shock. ... Obviously
it wasn't normal, it was obviously something that was wrong, but I didn't
understand it."
A very similar event occurred a year later at a yeshiva
in the Old City of Jerusalem, he said, when he was getting dressed in the
dorm. He said Rabbi Weinberg "came into the room, gave me a hug, hands inside
the robe, fondling me again."
Yitzchak said he was confused because he felt that
to break away from Rabbi Weinberg was "like breaking off from the path of
enlightenment, your opportunity to really develop fully as a Jew."
But after another encounter two months later in the
rabbi's home, "I was gone," he said, and soon left the school.
Six or seven years later, Yitzchak felt a need to confront
Rabbi Weinberg, he said. When he next saw the rabbi, "he tried to tell me
that I enjoyed it, that I wanted it."
Yitzchak said it was "a liberating experience" for
him to see the rabbi "squirm."
"It was an act of closure," he said.
Moving Forward
But several of the other alleged victims say they are
pursuing the case now because they are still troubled emotionally by the
long-ago encounters and feel a strong need to try to protect young men from
being harmed in the future. They note that a number of the alleged incidents
of sexual abuse took place at the Kerem yeshiva and that California has no
statute of limitations on such crimes.
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| Rabbi Eliezer Eidlitz |
Rabbi Eidlitz was planning to be at the May 1 panel
in New York and said his purpose is "to protect people from being molested.
I have to put my own feelings and emotions aside to be able to accomplish
that goal."
He said he is dedicated to "doing what is needed to
end this disgusting type of act in the frum community."
Rabbi Blau of Yeshiva University noted that while the
community "has become sensitized to the problems of abuse since the [Rabbi
Baruch] Lanner scandal [three years ago], we are still lacking a clear and
effective mechanism to deal with allegations of abuse that protects the victims
while filtering out frivolous accusations."
He said that only when there is success in dealing
with these problems internally, without fear that the offender will simply
move somewhere else and repeat his behavior, can "we discuss dealing with
issues in privacy." Until that time, he said, "only public exposure is effective
in protecting the community from abusers."
Rabbi Blau called it "a misapplication of chilul Hashem"
to worry more about communal embarrassment than "protecting future potential
victims at risk."
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| Aviva Weisborg, PhD |
They said they plan to help form a panel of rabbis
and professionals, including women, to act as a clearinghouse of abuse complaints
and to appoint investigators to look into allegations. Weisbord said she
would like to see a system of checks and balances, so that if parties are
not satisfied with the results of the panel's probe, "they can go to the
press."
"We would like to minimize chilul Hashem," she said,
"but the first priority is that children have to be protected." n
Elli Wohlgelernter is a former editor and reporter at The Jerusalem Post. Gary Rosenblatt is editor and publisher of The Jewish Week.
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