Sinas Chinam VII – Kalman the Konsumer

 

Author's Note - If you haven't done so, please see the previous post on this series: Sins of the Cross. It is helpful to also see these earlier posts:

Thinking Like a Jew

Double Standards – Part 2: Having Been There

I am gratified to see that my Sins of the Cross post actually inspired some comments. It seems like somebody featured my post on Facebook and Instagram and it got a ton of exposure. More than usual for my posts. I am aching to know the source Instagram post so I can see how it was presented. I will be grateful if someone could send me the link.

In any case, so far, I got four comments. All anonymous and not one of them is friendly. The first one was written by a Jewish person and the last by a non-Jewish person. I can’t determine the second or third. Aside from being antagonistic, all of them display the consumerist mindset that I am constantly battling.

What is a consumer?

I defined it in my book and again in some posts, such as this one (HERE). In short, it’s an uneducated person who has no clue how uneducated he or she is because they lack the education to know otherwise.

When it comes to Judaism, a consumer is somebody who thinks he knows what HKBH expects from us based on his or her personal sense of morality and/or what he was told by his parents and teachers in grade school and what he read in the Jewish Press, without ever making the effort to actually read and study what HKBH is telling us from the source.

I cannot blame the non-Jewish fourth commenter, but this is how [s]he preaches to me: 

 

If ANYTHING, it's your attacks on Nicole and her sisters that is bringing disrespect to your religion and to Y-H-W-H.

I hate to break it, but there is only one way to show respect to Y-H-W-H. This is to obey what He tells us to do and not do. (Shmuel I 15:22). Nicole is not very obedient. Y-H-W-H does not want to see sinas chinam, motzi shem rah, lashon hara, makkah re’ehu b’seter, malshinus, mesira, extradition to golus, gonev ish u’mecharo, gezel, nekama, netira, eid echad b’ish, chukos hagoyim, mitkabed b’kalon chaveiro, and above all, chillul Hashem.

It doesn’t matter who “started it”.

I can accuse Nicole of all of these because she is doing them proudly in public and announcing them to the world. Again and again. No reservations and not a drop of remorse. This is the exact definition of a chillul Hashem in Rambam Yesodei Torah 5:10.

רק אין יראת אלקים במקום הזה.

I posted succinct responses to all the commenters to convey that I read the messages and do not ignore or avoid them. But not everyone is brave enough to anonymously berate me online. Every so often somebody needs to contact me offline to put me in my place. People such as Reb Yid back in 2018. He bashed me relentlessly and I managed a few meek responses. That was a very relevant post, it is worth looking at (HERE).

After my Sins of the Cross post, I was contacted by a different Reb Yid. This fellow is actually a very opinionated blogger. My take on his blog is that it is aimed at showcasing everything wrong with Chareidi society and is out to make it look as dark as possible. I will not identify it. 

We had a previous email correspondence back in 2023. He made some very grandiose claims about some unknown “facts” in the Leifer episode. When I demanded he substantiate his claims, he abstained.

He recently contacted me again. This time, I asked him some probing questions to help me understand what type of person I am dealing with. These were questions such as how old he is, is he married, does he have a yeshiva education, does he have a personal connection to this episode (he indicated that he has inside knowledge), and, was he ever abused (like Reb Yid was). 

He did not answer any of them.

Like Reb Yid, he is a bona fide consumer as I defined it, and subscribes to the same lynch-mob herd mentality that I have been fighting throughout this fiasco. He believes that:

• An alleged molester is always a molester. He/she is totally and eternally irredeemable, is not considered Jewish, and has no rights. 

• Conversely, an alleged victim is always a victim, is immune from criticism, is exempt from being Jewish to their last day, and has unlimited rights.

• He shares the universal presumption of guilt that I am fighting against

• It is imperative to see to it that any miscreant is punished (to the extreme).

• שאר ירקות

In short, he does not know how to Think Like a Jew. 

I told him that I would like to respond to him in the blog and does he consent? 

He did not respond to this, either. So, I will not identify his email name or his blog, and I will not reprint his emails in whole, but I feel the need to respond to some of his misconceptions online. I will refer to him as Kalman.

In general, he writes the same apologetic “victims are always right[eous]” and “molesters are always demonic” glop that I got from Reb Yid and some others (like the four commenters). There are only two remarks that I want to respond to. Here is what Kalman writes to me:

Why do you keep defending a רשע?

Like so many others, Kalman has Mrs. Leifer pegged as a רשע and asks me why I keep defending her.

I want to answer him on three levels.

Level 1 – I never defended her 

This sounds strange because most people have very one-dimensional vision. If I defend any part of this episode, it is looked as if I am condoning and defending the actions that she is accused of. I have never done that in all of ten years.

I am defending the rights of an accused person as our Torah instructs us to do. I elaborated on this in my keynote blog post in June 2016. I clearly explained what the instructions of the Torah are. Nobody has ever discredited these instructions. They only refuse to acknowledge them. I do acknowledge them.

Level 2 – I suffer from a compulsion to defend people who are being prosecuted

In one of the introductory chapters of my book, I claimed that I am wearing three uniforms. One is that of a teacher and educator of Torah ideals. The second is one of a preacher of ethics. The third is the one of a defense attorney, to defend the Chareidi world and even some individuals from malicious “prosecution”. Defending the accused is in my bones.

In my Reb Yid post in 2018 I made the following remark:

As far as I am concerned, any Jew who is being prosecuted is worth protecting. Especially when it does not harm the accusers.

This is irrespective of whether they do or do not qualify as a רשע.

And why?

For one thing, the Torah that I follow says things like ונקי וצדיק אל תהרג and ושפטו העדה והצילו העדה. I don’t think it is in Kalman’s version.

Secondly, this is the type of treatment I would hope to get if, for whatever reason, I would find myself in such a predicament.

Later on in that post, I listed three reasons to explain “why I have a sense of compassion for Mrs. Leifer”. They were: (1) The fact that allegations haven’t been proven. I believe this to be the case even today (see HERE). (2) The strong likelihood that Mrs. Leifer is also a victim of abuse. (3) As much as anybody knows, she may well have abandoned her alleged wayward ways and done תשובה.

To these, I will add a fourth consideration which I have mentioned in more recent posts: (4) It is very likely she is suffering from an untreated personality disorder which can be treated.

I concluded that segment of the post by stating:

None of this compassion hurts the “victims” in any way unless they choose to be hurt by it. This would be a very selfish choice. It is a shame that Reb Yid is not capable of this kind of compassion.

To this, I now need to add Kalman.

Level 3 – Will the real rasha please stand up?

The first two levels are not meant to dispute the contention that Mrs. Leifer is a bona fide rasha. It is meant to display my perspective regardless. But now we need to question the very premise.

To start with, I need to reference my post Thinking Like a Jew which is the Halachic digest that served as a preamble to this entire episode. This is the “moral compass”. I don’t believe consumers such as Kalman have one.

One entry in that post is the definition of “Giluy arayos” – se%ual immorality. I noted that, by definition, all giluy arayos must involve a male of some species or another. Two females cannot engage in giluy arayos. Although there is an implied prohibition of “maaseh Eretz Mitzrayim” for two women to “get it on”, the Torah does not list it as an act of giluy arayos. (Rambam Issurei Biah 21:8).

So, after this, all the complaints against Mrs. Leifer boil down to “coercive control”. Nothing more. Controlling another more vulnerable person is not a virtuous attribute. I get that. But, in and of itself, without any genuine sins, it’s hard to justify the designation of rasha on this alone.

So, let’s take inventory.

Is Mrs. Leifer mechallel Shabbos?

No such claim. Can’t say the same for some of the Sapper sisters.

Did she do avodah zarah?

Again, no such claim.

Eat non-kosher?

No such claim. And how do Dassi and Elly score on that?

Giluy arayos?

As stated, no. 

Sh'fichas damim - Did she murder anybody?

The Sapper sisters and any other possible victims are all alive and well and living the lives of their choice.

Did she shame anyone publicly like Nicole and her sisters have been doing?

She hasn't said or written a word.

Did she steal anybody’s money or bring frivolous lawsuits like the Sapper sisters did?

No.

Did she mahser anybody to non-Jewish authorities like Nicole did?

No.

Did she actively extradite a Jew from Eretz Yisrael like Nicole and her sisters?

No.

Did she cause anyone to be kidnapped from her family as did Nicole?

No.

Does she go about spreading motzeh shem rah and lashon hara and malshinus about another Jew like Nicole is constantly doing?

No.

Did she carry out nekama and netira like Nicole is doing?

No.

Did she voluntarily testify against another Jew in a non-Jewish court like Nicole did?

No.

Did she do anything to perpetuate any chillul Hashem like Nicole is doing?

Not at all (see Rambam Yesodei Torah 5:10-11).

So, Kalman, please tell me. Who is the rasha around here?

Why, oh why, Kalman, do you keep defending a rasha?

We now come to the second remark from Kalman’s email that I need to respond to. Here is what he wrote:

You talk about כל הכועס ? How dare you? 

She has every single right to be “cross”

Okay, Greta. How dare I what?? How dare I quote a passage from Chazal (Nedarim 22a)???

This guy claims to be Jewish. He did not object when I quoted a passage from Shakespeare three posts ago. But now, when I quote a Chazal in Nedarim, it’s “How dare you?”. Does he believe in Chazal? Does he believe in the Oral Torah? 

I have my doubts.

This brings back fond memories about another consumerist muckraker blogger who calls himself Jewish. His name is Yerachmiel Lopin. I wrote about it in this 2016 post. Here’s what he wrote to me:

As always, you find every possible reason to believe she is not a risk to others, and every halachic angle to argue against prosecuting her… 

This was my open response:

Get this? This person calls himself a frum Jew, yet he criticizes me for finding “every Halachic angle to argue against prosecuting…”. Note that he does not invalidate or dispute the Halachic angles. They may be perfectly valid but I am at fault for finding them!! They weren’t very hard to find, by the way. He probably could have done it himself – if he wanted to. 

Back to Kalman. Of course, by "How dare you?" he may just mean that I am not qualified to quote Chazal. On this he has a point. I confess. I am not worthy. I am not worthy.

In the introductory book chapter that I mentioned above, I wrote that I am playing the role of an educator, preacher, and defense attorney. Do I have the qualifications for any of these?

Absolutely not. Even then, I wrote that I am not worthy. But I also wrote that somebody needs to fill these roles, and as long as I don’t see anyone else doing it, it’s up to me. The same applies now.

 במקום שאין אנשים, השתדל להיות איש.

He further contends that: she has every single right to be cross.

Really?

I might concede that she has grounds to be cross, but a right?

Where do our rights come from? The US Constitution? Can’t be. She is Australian, not American. There is no Bill of Rights in Australia. But even if she were American, I don’t think she has such rights. This is because we need to talk about G-d-given rights. And G-d-given rights come from G-d.

So, what rights does G-d give us? Let’s check His rulebook.

In Vayikra 19:17,18 He writes:

לא תשנא את אחיך בלבבך...לא תקם ולא תטר את בני עמך ואהבת לרעך כמוך אני השם.

לא תשנא את אחיך בלבבך – Do not hate your brother in your heart

It is forbidden to bear a grudge

לא תקום – It is forbidden to seek vengeance. No right to seek vengeance!

ולא תטר – It is forbidden to be cross. No right to be cross!

Who is this prohibition directed to? Is it to somebody who just won the Powerball? Someone who just gave birth to twins? Someone who was just handed the keys to their newly built 5-bedroom house? Someone who just married off their last daughter?

Obviously, it is directed to somebody who got a raw deal. Someone who had it hard and was taken advantage of. It is directed to somebody who has grounds to be cross and to seek vengeance. 

Unlike the consumerist pretenders like Kalman, G-d says she has no right to be cross.

The pasuk continues:

ואהבת לרעיך כמוך – Love your fellow as you love yourself.

One is commanded to learn how to love themselves. This is the only way one can learn to love somebody else. 

אני השם – I am G-d. 

All your trials and tribulations, all your successes and failures, all of your joys and tragedies, come only from Me. They do not come from anyone else. Only from Me. 

Do not blame anyone else. Do not bear a grudge. Do not seek vengeance. Do not be cross. 

How dare you??

You are aiming at the wrong target. You are barking up the wrong tree. It wasn’t them. It was Me – G-d. And I did it because I care for you. More than you care for yourself. I did it because I want you to flourish and become great. 

But you need to follow Me, says G-d, not fight Me.

Kalman and Nicole and her sisters believe that once one is a victim, they are a victim for life. And that they are now exempt from the entire Torah. For life. They can follow the herd of mindless consumers instead of following G-d.

My father, LOYT, taught me otherwise. He taught me that the minute the oppression ends, one is no longer a victim. And there is no escaping G-d. 

My father was all of 15 years old when he was liberated from Ebensee labor camp. This is after Auschwitz and after Mauthausen. His first act was to put on a tattered shel yad of tefillin before he even approached the food line (there was no shel rosh).

I once asked him why he chose to remain a mitzvah observant Jew even when so many others did not. He told me that it never entered his mind not to.   

The Nazis killed his parents and almost all his extended family (B”H, his two sisters survived and also stayed religious). But he just moved on. He did not bear a grudge. He did not seek vengeance and he was never cross. We are not referring to his peers and brethren but to the seed of Amalek. And, even so. He just went on with his life and rebuilt and didn’t spend a minute worrying about his oppressors. 

This was 81 years and about 70 great grand-children ago. He loves himself (and us) more than he hates them, and it’s paid off. To this very day, ad meah v’esrim, he is still up and around. He counts what he has, not what he doesn’t. Because this is what HKBH commanded us.

And as for Nicole and her sisters and the consumerist bloggers – one cannot have a dialog with them. They are so bent on what they believe.

How dare they?

Dor Holech V'Dor Ba - Repost of 2014 Pnei HaDor

Netanyahu: Arrest Law will not be reinstated | Israel National News

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a closed-door discussion that the law freezing arrests of yeshiva draft evaders failed to achieve its goal and will not be renewed in the next government. “Whoever does not study Torah will enlist - or go to prison," he said.

It's hard to believe that 12 years have passed since 2014 when I made my Pnei HaDor post. Like they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Of course, October 7 happened in the interim and lots of people woke up to Who really runs the show. Nevertheless, the Kochi V'Otzem Yadi faction is also still alive and kicking and trying to convince us that we need to have more Koach and Otzem Yad and less Ameilus B'Torah to keep us in business.

Chazal tell us otherwise.

And this circus is being run by the exact same three stooges ringleaders. Lapid, Bennet, and Netanyahu - לב"נ (plus the usual supporting cast - Lieberman, Gantz, Eisenkot and many more.)

They are twelve years older and grayer but not a drop wiser. 

The civil war against the Bnei Hayeshivos has become uglier. Real honest to goodness Torah learners are being arrested for helping the nation in the best possible way. Okay, okay, one guy wasn't learning Torah. He was sitting shiva and one is not allowed to learn Torah during shiva. Just a technicality, I guess.

The above linked article looks strange. Netanyahu is quoted as saying: 

'Those who do not study Torah will enlist - or go to prison.'

The implication is that those who do study Torah will not enlist or go to prison. But that isn't what's going on. Notice they are called Yeshiva draft evaders in the first line of the article. They are not called Chareidi draft evaders.

In order to illustrate where we were 12 years ago and how nothing has changed, I want to repost my award-winning 2014 post, The Pnei Hador have told the nation/They won't stand for segregation... 

Let's see where we'll be in another 12 years. Here it is:

The Pnei Hador have told the nation/They won't stand for segregation... 

We may think that the three most influential leaders of the State of Israel, the “Pnei Hador” (shown below carrying the whole world on their shoulders) are not looking out for our best interests.

Pnei Hador (from left): Curly Bennet, Larry Lapid, Moe Netanyahu

Our musical spokesman, Asher V’Chaim, knows otherwise.

Who is Asher V’Chaim?

Well, nobody really knows. He has not gone public with his true identity. So he calls himself Asher V’Chaim.

Why?

Because in some earlier statement, Yair Lapid used the names “Asher V’Chaim” as a reference to the paradigm chareidi man in the street beis-midrash. (Like we say “John Doe” or “Tom, Dick, and Harry”). So this fellow calls himself "Asher V’Chaim" to be representative of the paradigm chareidi a la Yair Lapid.

He seems to be a young fellow but he is also well acquainted with 1960s antiwar songs. I am duly impressed because I am indeed a child of the 60s and a true red-white-and-blue American and I had never heard the original Tom Paxton anti-Vietnam song that he is parodying. Incidentally, Tom Paxton in his much later years put out a sequel to this song with regard to the second Iraq war.

The Paxton songs are definitely the perfect choice for a source song because they express the exact same sentiment as the new chareidi parody:

The government is enacting compulsory laws to satisfy its own agenda and is justifying it as saving the “victims” from… themselves.

The protesters didn’t buy it then and we don’t buy it now.

In any event, this song is going viral in Chareidi circles here in E”Y. You may not consider 3,800+ hits viral, but considering the fact that it had only 650 hits a mere 2 days ago and the limited market it addresses, it’s pretty active.

For convenience, the lyrics for this parody are readily available on the YouTube post. Unfortunately, they are in Hebrew and the English speaker may not readily grasp the full meaning. So, as one of my many public services, I am presenting a linear translation of the lyrics. The translation is meant to preserve the Hebrew flavor so it may not be conversational English.  I also apologize that I was unable to poeticize it with rhymes and a steady meter (though I tried). 

So, here is the song. (If the clip does not appear in the blog email, it can be accessed HERE.)

 

And here are the lyrics.

“In just a short time will arrive the order
that will clarify the situation
that “equality of burden” is already here.
No non-compliance will be forgiven
and to the prisons they will be driven
to be an avreich (kollel fellow) here will be hazardous.”

Yair, Bennet and also Bibi
they are concerned about you, my dear one
[although] they are destroying for you the sanctuary.
“To the army that is like none other
we will conscript you, my brother
and there, we will give you a new education.”

“If your name will be left out
to what can you hope to amount?
One who hampers the development will adversely affect the product.
You have not acquired higher education
you do not comprehend economics
the most that you will ever be fit for is…to be Minister of Finance.”

Yair, Bennet and also Bibi
they are concerned about you, my dear one
[although] they are destroying for you the sanctuary.
“To the army that is like none other
we will conscript you, my brother
and there, we will arrange for you a new education.”

“You are amazed and ask with urgency
if this “burden” is in truth necessary.
Why do we currently need obligatory enlistment?
Arise from your delusions, and awaken
they have built careers around this “equality” slogan
Why ruin an effective battle-cry?”

Yair, Bennet and also Bibi
they are concerned about you, my dear one
[although] they are destroying for you the sanctuary.
“To the army that is like none other
your enlistment is imperative
so that we can give you a new education.”

“If you will shout throughout the kingdom
‘Where are the emperor’s clothes?’
Just look at how silly you are.
If the army would hire and train
only the amount of soldiers that it really needs,
how would this country manage to produce any shesh-besh (backgammon) champions?”

Yair, Bennet and also Bibi
they are concerned about you, my dear one
[although] they are destroying for you the sanctuary.
“To the army that is like none other
we will conscript you, my brother
and we will hand you down a new education.”

“Many have already stood against you
[to challenge] your ‘goodly tents’ (of learning and praying)
to uproot Torah learning from the Jews.
They all failed in their endeavors
and did not accomplish their missions
yet we will [succeed to] actualize a first-of-its-kind law!”

Yair, Bennet and also Bibi
they are concerned about you, my dear one
[although] they are destroying for the third time the sanctuary.
“To the army that is like none other
we will conscript you, my brother
and, we will transform you to a new chiloni (secularist).”

“and, we will transform you to a new chiloni (secularist).”

And so... 

The Pnei Hador have told the nation/they won’t stand for segregation…

…and they will fix our education.

פרעה לא גזר אלא על הזכרים – אבל לב"נ ביקש לעקור את הכל.

 

 

 

 

 

Sinas Chinam VI – Sins of the Cross

 

We are all taught that when we have a wound or a mosquito bite that scabbed over, just leave it alone. Do not pick at the scabs. If you do, you are just irritating the wound and it will take longer to heal. Not just that, it is likely to leave an uglier scar than if it was just left to heal by itself. Don’t keep picking at it.

I truly wish Nicole Meyer and her sisters would know this lesson. They claim that they were “wounded” by the “evil” Mrs. Leifer. Well, that was beyond 18 years ago and there hasn’t been any wounding since. But they just keep picking at it. And it still hasn’t healed. And, as long as they keep picking at it, it isn't going to heal. 

First, they needed to disrupt 10-15 years of their lives for a pursuit of misplaced “justice” which is really revenge. You would think that after they finally got their revenge justice, they could just leave everything alone and let it "heal”. But…No-o-o. They need to keep picking at it. They need to make sure they don’t heal and that the scars stand out. It’s another form of self-harm.

Not only won’t it heal, but it will spread. They are seeing to it that it spreads.

To start with, Dassi Erlich came out with her dishonest and poisonous book bent on blaming everyone in the world. I discussed it at length. At the same time, Nicole has taken to TikTok. Her account is over three years old and currently has about 20,000 followers. I cannot determine how many video posts there are, but they number in the hundreds. 

How many of these hundreds of videos are clear of any lashon hara or motzi shem rah? 10%? 20%? It’s hard to assume it is any more than that, but even if it reaches 50%, we still have hundreds of short videos chock full of lashon hara, motzi shem rah and sinas chinam for her 20,000 followers. They are meant to be available on the Internet forever! 

One thing that stands out is that every single thing she says about Malka Leifer is derogatory. Not a single thing positive to say. Zero.

How does somebody do teshuva for that? How can somebody heal from that?

As an example of one video that I actually looked at, Nicole displays a picture of Malka Leifer smiling and all dressed up wearing pearls. She tells us that this picture is cut in half. She is in the other half but cannot share it. Today is her 18th anniversary and she tells us that Malka Leifer abused her even on her wedding day.

Let’s assume this narrative is totally 100% true. This post is dated Aug. 20, 2024. Mrs. Leifer has been “found guilty” and is in jail for over a year. Why does anybody need to know this “truth”? Who does it help? What is the toelles?

I may get back to TikTok later but what I really want to discuss is that Nicole has likewise gone riding the podcast circuit. This gets much more exposure. I’m not talking about Jewish podcasts like The Struggle or Meaningful People. I am talking about raw secular non-Jewish podcasts where she is paying homage to their gods, not ours.

I have no idea how many “appearances” she has made since 2023, and perhaps she was initially keeping a low profile. But in 2025, shortly before the privileged documentary was released, she participated in two very high-profile podcasts in the non-Jewish arena. 

One was a serial podcast called I Catch Killers. This is hosted by a fellow named Gary Jubelin. Gary Jubelin was a very successful and highly celebrated homicide detective in NSW, Australia. Sometime around 2023, Jubelin was convicted of unlawfully recording conversations of suspects, fined AU$ 10,000 and forced to retire. As do so many [Australian] folks forced into early retirement, they go into show business and make even more money and get even more famous. As you may assume, the focus of this podcast would be to assess the criminality of our episode.

The other one is likewise a serial podcast called Sins of the Cross. This is hosted by an Aussie named Glen Fisher who grew up in a very bad neighborhood. He was abused multiple times (real abuse – by men) and fell into homelessness and drugs, the works. Miraculously, he pulled himself out of it, went straight and found religion. He got many of his abusers into trouble. Started charities, wrote a book and now hosts a podcast where he interviews fellow “survivors”. Understandably, the focus of his podcast is to assess the horrors of abuse.

Incidentally, Glen Fisher was also featured on I Catch Killers.

Both of these podcasts are in a non-Jewish setting and reflect non-Jewish values and standards. They are all about abuse, abuse, abuse, victim, victim, victim, and justice, justice, justice. And they employ the secular non-Jewish definitions of all of them. 

In these podcasts, Nicole comes across very articulate, very intelligent, very poised. Nevertheless, since these are all amicable, sympathetic interviews, nothing she says is challenged and there is no pushback. These podcasts are mere echo chambers. Abuse, victim, justice, abuse, victim, justice, lather, rinse, repeat.

In spite of everything I already knew, or thought I knew about this episode, these podcasts were very revealing. This is especially since most of noise that I filtered until now has come from Dassi Erlich. She’s not even pretending to be religious. But, in these podcasts, it’s Nicole, the oldest and the “observant” one, who is showing her cards.

Let me say that regarding the objective facts of what happened, Nicole comes across very credible. All indications are that some forms of abuse took place and she is not making up the basic story. I see a lot of pain and a lot of trauma. I believe the pain is genuine and the trauma is genuine. 

But her subjective analysis of her experiences show something else. They show a lot of hatred and a lot of anger. A tremendous amount of anger. In England and South Africa, and I assume, in Australia as well, people do not say they are angry. They say they are cross. 

In Judaism we say that it is a severe sin to be angry. A severe sin to be cross. כל הכועס, כל מיני גהינום שולטים עליו. One who is cross, all forms of purgatory dominate him (or her). So, it’s a sin to be cross. Let us discuss the Sins of the Cross.

Nicole Meyer is very, very cross. What is she cross about?

Well, for starters, she is cross that the evil Mrs. Leifer abused her for so many years. Yet, when she finally shlepped her all the way to Australia with every intention of getting full revenge justice, interminable jail sentences, and validation for her perpetual victimhood, it didn’t work out that way. Mrs. Leifer was acquitted of every charge that pertained to her. Of the remaining 22 charges, she was convicted of 18 of them and acquitted on the rest. This brought a total sentence of 15 years minus time served. 

To some extent, this contradicts numerous statements that we heard from Dassi Erlich when she said, “All I want is to face her in an Australian court.” [This quote is from memory and may not be exact.] What they really meant is that they wanted to deface her in an Australian court. They did what they did and got what they got but they are still not satisfied. 

In some post-trial interviews, Nicole said that she does not understand why Mrs. Leifer was acquitted for all charges pertaining to her. She knows “her truth”. Despite this, she did indeed mention two contributing factors:

• She wasn’t allowed to present all of the evidence that she wanted. A lot of evidence was ruled to be inadmissible. Of course, we will never know the strength of this so-called evidence and why it was considered to be inadmissible. For sure, Nicole won’t tell us.

• The defense asked Nicole to read out to the jury a few letters that she had written to Mrs. Leifer thanking her “for her help and for putting a smile on my face.”

I am sure they had a lot of impact, but I think there is a third, much stronger reason. This is where I found her podcasts, especially the one with the detective, to be so revealing, and it is something that I suspected from the get-go. 

From what Nicole tells Gary Jubelin, the discussion about seqsual abuse was very marginal. It wasn’t really seqsual abuse. That was just a by-product. It was a venture of total domination and mind control. Like a cult leader. A condition that has recently been called coercive control or narcissistic abuse.  

Here is how she describes it (30:00):

I've actually thought I could write a book on the seven years that I was with Malka Leifer because it is so extensive. And the coercive control and the impact and the control she had in every single area of my life is extremely difficult to understand unless it's really fully understood.

And 1.5 minutes later:

Like she groomed a community. She groomed the teachers. She groomed all the students. It was Mrs. Leifer at this and Mrs. Leifer at that…I would say she groomed majority of the community with her actions, her behaviors, where she was, her visibility was always there.

So, Nicole claims that Mrs. Leifer groomed the entire community. 

This is very much like Joan Samson’s The Auctioneer. This is a 1970s fictional thriller about a sleepy rural town in New Hampshire just minding its own business until a charismatic man of the world arrives out of nowhere and suggests holding an auction to support the town’s one-man police force. Soliciting donations from the townsfolk, his auction goes so well that he holds another, then another, then another, week after week, month after month. Eventually the beleaguered townspeople have nothing left to give, but the auctioneer, backed by the increasingly powerful police department, is unrelenting in his demands for more. Those who resist meet with violent “accidents.” In short, his charisma and smooth talk undoes the entire peaceful town. 

I cannot believe that Mrs. Leifer seqsually abused the entire community. Evidently, seqsual abuse was not her real game. It was the attention.

We’ve all heard of this – narcissism, gaslighting, mind control, domination, isolation. It is the exact same abuse she got from her parents except they did it by force and Mrs. Leifer did it by charm. Yes, this behavior is abusive and traumatizing and debilitating. But there is one problem. 

It is not a crime.

There is one very chilling statement in The Auctioneer: “Just remember this,” he said. “Whatever I’ve done, you’ve let me do.”

In truth, I came across a YouTube clip of a woman therapist presenting a very legal definition of coercive control and claiming that it is now a crime in about seven US states. Though, it is very difficult to establish and would require precise documentation. [Tznius alert – the woman therapist is not properly dressed in the clip so I cannot recommend watching it, only listening to it. Perhaps, scroll out the media window or switch to your emails or solitaire app while you listen.]

Still, in most places it is not a crime and will probably never be one. I assume such to be the case in Australia, especially since she wasn’t charged with it.

Do you know why it won’t be a crime? It is because, most of the time it is not driven by criminal intent. It is usually a result of a cycle of emotional abuse, insecurity, low self-esteem, not knowing how to love or to be loved, PTSD, a craving for power, paranoia, and other pathologies. These should put abusers into therapy but not prison. In general, they have committed no violent crime.

But Nicole and her sisters are very cross. So, like our DoorDash girl, they need to redefine this coercive control as a violent crime in the name of getting revenge justice. The way to do it is to overblow every touch and caress into seqsual “abuse” and “rape” to get it to constitute a horrific crime. This is even without any claims of being forced.

Well, they get mob bosses on “tax evasion” and “racketeering”, don’t they? Just, these guys do have criminal intent.

In any case, in Nicole’s case, she was basically at the age of consent all the way through and the seqsual aspect was relatively marginal. especially since female-to-female seqsual activity is much harder to define and to substantiate. As such, my assumption is her case was too weak for a conviction.

And so, Nicole is very cross. And when you consider that, by the rules of our Torah, none of this is criminal, Nicole is sinfully cross. Allowing oneself to be manipulated does not carry much currency in a Beis Din. Emotional pain may be considered damaging and damages need to be compensated, but it is not criminal by our standards. Conversely, vengeance is criminal. And sinful.

This brings me to the other “revealing” factor which was always self-evident. This was an exchange at the end of the podcast with Glen Fisher and it blew me away. 

Bear in mind that the focus of Glen Fisher’s podcast, Sins of the Cross, is discussing the horrors of abuse as they affect the victims, not the criminality of the abusers. Most of the podcast was Glen Fisher and Nicole Meyer comparing notes on their respective experiences. Clearly, Glen Fisher had it much worse since he was genuinely seqsually molested with real acts of se%. He was allegedly molested by male parts. Nicole was allegedly molested by female fingers.

The part that fascinated me was about the 55:00 mark of the podcast. Glen fisher brings up the fact that he may have the opportunity to actually speak to his abuser when he will be assessed for parole. He says that initially he felt that he should approach his abuser to tell him these three words:

I forgive you.

This blew me away.

He then clarified what he meant by saying that he wanted to show the abuser that he no longer has power over him and that he is not letting him live rent free in his head. In other words, he has learned to let go. Interesting choice of words, nonetheless.

This is one of the only segments that Nicole did not fully concur with the host. She emphatically agreed that she, too, longs to have a “conversation” with Mrs. Leifer, but nothing along the lines of “I forgive you”.

In the Gary Jubelin podcast (45:40), she is a little more articulate. Her dream is to give Mrs. Leifer some kind of mussar shmooze first itemizing everything she did to her and then to say, “but you cannot break me and you cannot take away my life. I'm taking it back what you took and I'm going to show you that what you have done to me is not going to break me and not going to impact me the way you think it did.” 

Sounds very defiant, just that, despite the alleged coercive control and narcissistic abuse, I am not convinced that Mrs. Leifer was ever really trying to break her or take away her life. So, it would be a pyrrhic victory, in my opinion.

But what’s clear is that Nicole cannot let go. Unlike Glen Fisher, she cannot forgive. Forgiveness is not in her vocabulary. Her hatred runs so deep. She keeps picking at the wound and it will never heal. The sins of the cross are eternal.

I came across this TikTok video.  In it, Nicole once again expresses the three top things she would say to Mrs. Leifer if she could have a conversation with her.

(1) She would tell her that “she didn’t break me.” -  I commented on this earlier. There is no evidence that Malka Leifer was aiming to destroy anybody. It looks like she only needed to fill her own empty spaces. And, if so, why does Nicole Meyer need to break Malka Leifer?

On the side, the more she tells us - 18 years later - that Mrs. Leifer didn't break her, the more broken she looks to be.

(2) She would ask, “did she know what her abuse was doing?” – How would Nicole respond if she says "No, I didn’t"?

(3) She would ask, "will she ever admit what she did?" – My answer is that she can’t. The Sapper sisters won’t let her. 

I have followed this case for over ten years. All I saw was a quest to prosecute, punish, imprison. Never, ever did I see any attempt to make Shalom, to reconcile. To just ask for an apology and leave it at that (they already got money from the school). Never any attempt to settle this quietly or to first make a personal demand and then say "if you don’t do it, then we will contact the authorities". It was straight to authorities from the get-go. Go straight to jail - Do not pass go, do not collect anything. 

From the start, they wanted blood and vengeance and not peace. And it was always hidden behind the battle-cry of “justice”. And they still want it. Never any attempt to fix, they only want to destroy. Hence, to admit anything would only assist in their destructiveness and make things worse for her. Why should she even try?

If Nicole wants to have a sincere conversation with Mrs. Leifer, there is one question that she will need to ask her before any other one. But I know she could never bring herself to do it. She won’t have the courage. It might undermine everything she worked for since 2011 and destroy her persona as a victim. Nicole cannot take that chance. 

The question is:

Mrs. Leifer, did anybody molest you when you were young? Are you [also] a victim of abuse?

The sins of the cross. כל הכועס, כל מיני גהינם שולטים עליו. 

I am not sure who is the evil one. 

Sinas Chinam V - A Ruse by Any Other Name Would Smell as Foul

Ever since the story broke last October, I have debated whether to write about the DoorDash Girl.

On the one hand, this is certainly not the kind of news item that should be on our radar screen. On the other hand, there is a very important lesson that emerges from this story that is a clear and frightening sign of the times. 

I assume most American readers know what DoorDash is (I only found out in October). DoorDash is a freelance courier service that restaurants or other retail shops use to deliver online or telephone purchases to the customers. It is a competitor of Uber Eats. Here in Israel, we have those Wolt motorcycles. 

Any capable person with a vehicle can sign up to be a DoorDash delivery person and make a handful of cash. Many folks do it, some for basic income and some for money on the side.

This event took place on October 12, 2025 in Oswego, NY. A 23-year-old woman who was driving for DoorDash was called to make a delivery. I would guess that this woman is not married and indications are she does not even have a boyfriend. 

The call was to a man’s home with explicit instructions to leave the delivery outside the door and not to bother ringing the bell or coming in.

 

According to her, when she arrived at the home the door was wide open. It seems that the door was not locked and may have been slightly open but nothing in her TikTok video confirms the claim that it was wide open. The man inside was not fully dressed, incapacitated and unconscious on his couch after drinking alcohol. A little bit like Noach. ויתגל בתוך אהלה.

Instead of just leaving the delivery as instructed, or taking a blanket and walking backwards to cover up the indecency, she did a true maaseh shel Canaan (or Cham). She pulled out her cell phone while outside the home, and recorded the man while he was totally unconscious on his couch. She didn’t just tell her immediate family members (if she has any), but rather posted the video online to the entire world – currently more than only eight people. It is said that up to 30 million viewers viewed her revealing video on her TikTok page. 

In the Noach story, Rashi says that Noach was physically assaulted and, although intoxicated, he was unequivocally the victim. But this woman, after filming and posting this man’s “deficiency” complained to her DoorDash superiors that she was se%ually assaulted on the job. The complaint was forwarded to the Oswego Police Department and they investigated the matter obtaining statements from both the driver and the customer. 

The police determined that no actual se%ual assault (SA) occurred. Moreover, they determined that the woman violated two felony offenses. For this she was arrested and later indicted. She is now charged with unlawful surveillance in the second-degree and dissemination of an unlawful surveillance image in the first-degree. She now faces up to four years in prison for each felony which, could add up to eight years in the pen. 

In an Oct. 16 statement, DoorDash said that the driver’s DoorDash account was deactivated along with that of the customer. “Posting a video of a customer in their home and disclosing their personal details publicly is a clear violation of our policies,” read the statement in part.

But it seems that after she lost her job and faced prosecution, she went absolutely berserk. In some of the online versions of this news story, they show an excerpt of a TikTok video that she made after being fired where she can be seen screaming at the top of her lungs, “How can I be fired? I was SA’ed! I am the victim!”

She is saying that the mere fact that this person was in his own home totally unconscious and totally unaware of her presence, and that he was not covered below the belt, and that the door of the house did not prevent her from trespassing is his act of SA toward her.

Thank G-d, she didn’t get anywhere with this. At least upstate NY is not half as crazy as is metro NY. But it is very disturbing all the same. 

Even if she couldn’t convince her employers, the cops, or her viewers that she is a victim of SA, she certainly convinced herself. It’s not that she’s pulling a ruse and she knows it, and is just trying to “get away with it”. No, from all appearances she truly believes it. And this makes a big difference when liberals like her do indeed get positions in the DA’s office. Yeah, it didn’t play in Oswego and it wouldn’t play in Peoria, but it might play in Manhattan or Chicago.

I have no idea what the millions of viewers thought, but it’s a safe bet that there is at least a fair minority on her side. In a world where clearly stated definitions become subjective, anything goes.

This is not a new tactic. If the events don’t fit the crime, just redefine the crime to fit the events. This is how they put vaguely defined crimes on the books such as “bribery” and “racketeering” and “conspiring to...” to nab crooks and politicians (more or less synonymous) and Kosher meatpackers to help fill the prisons and justify the hard work of prosecutors. 

However, in the past, this used to be done on the sly. In today’s world, it is done blatantly and shamelessly. Hence, the shamelessness of the DoorDash girl.

בעקבתא דמשיחא חוצפא יסגיא.

This is no more apparent than in the two-year-old debacle of the ICJ accusations against Israel. We know that the South Africans, who are the genuine Bnei Cham, wanted us to be prosecuted for “genocide”. Thus, they filed a complaint to the International Court of Jesters Justice (ICJ). As we know, all Jew haters worldwide have been chanting the “genocide” song ever since October 7, but when an international court needs to apply judicial process to the claims, the stakes are much higher. 

Firstly, the court at least needs to present a façade of jurisprudence to retain a sense of impartiality and credibility. This is no small feat for them. Secondly, in so doing, the court needs to have clear definitions of the terms and apply them judiciously. Thirdly, they need to establish “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the conditions for prosecution, as defined, are being met.

To do so, they would need irrefutable evidence of incidents where civilians (non-combatants) were being targeted for hostilities or even combatants with no regard for the safety of civilians in the area. Even if an isolated incident or two is found, it needs to be established that this is the policy of the body that is accused and not an anomaly carried out by renegades.

They weren’t able to do that. So the next step was to move the goalposts. As such, in December 2024, our great friends from Ireland wanted to “broaden” the definition of “genocide” for the good of the poor civilians who weren’t being targeted. As I wrote above, if the events don’t fit the crime, just redefine the crime to fit the events.

Needless to say, such a move would open a Pandora's box and eventually come back and bite those who push for it. As far as I know, this did not get anywhere. Yet, the fact that a “concerned” sovereign nation could push for it tells us a lot about where we are.

Another “redefinition” of bad behavior is one that I have written about in numerous previous posts generally in regard to the Malka Leifer affair. But this one is a double whammy. The bad behavior in question is: pedophilia.

In my preamble post 10 years back titled Thinking Like a Jew, I stated the true definition of pedophile (from Wikipedia). Here is an excerpt:

Pedophilia - a psychiatric disorder in which an adult or older adolescent experiences a primary or exclusive se%ual attraction to prepubescent children.

Notice the word prepubescent. This means a child who has not yet reached puberty. For a girl, the cutoff would be about 12 and maximum 13.

This indicates that any se%ual offender who is just as eager to assault a person beyond puberty as they are one below puberty doesn’t fit the definition of pedophile. This person doesn’t really discriminate and, as such, there is no primary or exclusive attraction to children. More so, one who hasn’t even offended a prepubescent child at all.

But, just like the “anti”-genocidists, liberal folks need to demonize and dehumanize the offender to the utmost. Hence, they redefine a pedophile as one who experiences a se%ual attraction to children. Somehow, they dispense with the modifiers, “primary or exclusive” and “prepubescent”.

To help accomplish this, they utilize today’s liberal redefinition of the term "child". In today’s world it basically means any person, at any age, who cannot think for themselves, which technically includes any liberal person at any age. 

By broadening the definition of child, not only do they broaden the definition of pedophile (hence the double-whammy), but they also broaden the definition of genocide. Countless times we have heard the news announce: “There have been a gazillion civilian deaths – mostly women and children…” 

Hey, if a 15-year-old post-puberty boy who is trained to fight, is armed to the teeth, and is present on the battlefield constitutes a “child”, there will be many such “children” on the casualty list. And if this applies to a 17-year-old and to a 19-year-old and to a 21-year-old – and I don’t even think it ends there – there are bound to be lots and lots of dead “children”.

These first few “redefinitions” (SA, genocide, pedophile, and child) all have to do with defining - or redefining and broadening - crimes. 

I have one more redefined term to discuss. This one is not meant to broaden the crimes to fit the events, but to legitimize the punishments. The term is…Justice.

What does the term “justice” really mean?

Let’s check out Wikipedia. Here is what it says:

In its broadest sense, justice is the treatment of individuals fairly. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the most plausible candidate for a core definition comes from the Institutes of Justinian, a 6th-century codification of Roman law, where justice is defined as "the constant and perpetual will to render to each his due".

So justice means fairness. And here is an amazing corollary: the term “justice” is more applicable to the perpetrator than it is to the victim. It means that if one is accused of something, or sued for something, the defendant must be treated fairly. Lynching a suspected horse thief is not “justice” even if he really is a horse thief.

Yet, somehow it came to mean something else. It is redefined as "seeing to it that a wrongdoer gets his comeuppance". In my previous Sinas Chinam post (June 18), I made a big fuss out of this. Currently, justice is redefined as prosecution, punishment and retribution. Somehow, now, a victim gets justice, not a perpetrator.

How did this come about?

In my very first post about the Malka Leifer affair - Mesira XII: Justice is Blind...and Deaf - Midas Ha"Din" – I explained how today’s concept of justice is built. I made a few points. Here are the main ones:

The human being abhors monotony and craves drama. As such, whenever possible, a monotonous event will be dramatized to the utmost.

The human being firmly believes that good should be rewarded and evil should be punished and, as such, has a craving to administer justice and to exact revenge.

The normal human being (not a psychopath) cannot conscience unjustified violence. As such he must have some battle-cry or pretense which he will swear by to justify his actions. (E.g., righting a wrong - serving justice, avenging the "victim".)

This says that there is a universal bloodlust for crime and punishment. If the crime does not exist, it needs to be created. The old definitions need to be “broadened”. If the consequences of the crime are not debilitating and they do not mollify our bloodlust, they need to be intensified. Whereupon, they are explained away as “doing the right thing”. Fairness has nothing to do with this. The ends justify the means. 

This is the power of sinas chinam. This is the craft of Haman and Amalek, the duplicity of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza. It’s a trap that many of us fall into to this day.

Revised definitions, a ruse by another name, may not play in Oswego and Peoria, but they will play on Broad-way.