Four Horsemen of the Kol Koreh 3 – The Malka Leifer Debacle

 

Author's note - This post is the continuation on the series about The Four Horsemen of the Kol Koreh Apocalypse. If you are not up to date on the topic, please see the opening post HERE, the Interlude post HERE and the previous post HERE.

 

 

Onward with the Four Horsemen of the Kol Koreh Apocalypse.

So far, we discussed Horsemen 1 and 2. We will now embark upon Horsemen 3 and 4. All the Horsemen have a primary common denominator. In all the cases, it figures that to take the case directly to the law enforcement authorities is bound be counterproductive. That said, there are some important factors that distinguish the first two types, Horsemen 1 and 2, from the second two types, Horsemen 3 and 4.

The first distinction is merely technical.

The first two Horsemen are fictitious. They are dramatizations of scenarios that frequently occur in real life in various ways; nevertheless, the specific scenarios that were portrayed did not actually occur. As such, there is no way to tell how they were actually handled, since they weren’t handled, and what were the short-term and long-term results. They are not real events, so we can’t know how they really panned out. We can’t know who benefited and who “lost”.

Also, without real live occurrences, I cannot conclusively “prove my case”.

Conversely, the second two Horsemen are real-life events. And because they each really happened, we can take stock. In both cases, the alleged victims filed police reports. To the best of my knowledge, in neither of the cases did the complainant seek out objective Rabbinical advice before filing the complaints. Of the two cases, one ended in unmitigated disaster. For the other, the jury is still out, literally, but it isn’t going anywhere it should; I can tell you that.

A second major distinction is that the first two Horsemen portrayed situations where, arguably, mesira to authorities could be Halachically sanctioned. The first Horseman, the Shattered video from Amudim, was a clearer case of an active threat and one who could be considered a rodef and, theoretically, a “911 situation”. The second Horseman also indicates one who can be deemed as an active threat to the community under the banner of meitzar ess harabim, i.e., a Chaim Walder or Meshi-Zahav in the making. These types of cases may have Halachic support.

Even so, we determined that the conventional wisdom would be to refrain from running immediately to the police in each of the cases, as 21 out of 27 Rabbanim have told us.   

The second two Horsemen are both real-life cases where it clearly wasn’t a “911 situation” by any stretch. At the time of reporting to authorities, they were both events of several years in the past. Whatever claim of rodef or meitzar ess harabim that might have been made at show-time was long gone and there definitely were not enough grounds to assume them to be still in effect.

Although it could readily be said that this Kol Koreh wasn’t targeting these cases, it is hard to say that it did not influence what happened.

So, let’s now discuss these two Horsemen. We will resume with Horseman #3, the case of Malka Leifer.

Certainly, anyone who has followed my blog from June 2016 until early 2021 knows the basic details of the saga, as well as my position. For those who are clueless or would like to review it, the story is told in detail HERE. As a public service, I will reprint the basic timeline from this Dec. 2017 article:

2001: Israeli teacher Malka Leifer arrives at the Adass Israel girls school in Melbourne's south-east. The following year she is appointed principal.

 

March 2008: The school is alerted to sexual abuse allegations against Leifer by a social worker who Dassi Erlich has been seeing for treatment. The Adass community allegedly pays for Leifer and her family to flee Australia.

 

2011: Elly Sapper gives a statement to Victoria Police regarding allegations of sexual abuse by Leifer. Her sisters make statements shortly afterwards.

 

2014: Sapper receives a confidential out-of-court settlement after suing for damages. Victoria Police announce that Leifer is wanted on 74 charges of sexual assault and rape relating to girls who attended the Adass Israel school. Leifer is placed under house arrest in Israel as extradition proceedings begin.

 

2015: Erlich endures a two-week trial in the Supreme Court, after the school refuses to settle out of court. She receives a record $1 million payout for damages.

 

March 2017: Erlich launches her #BringLeiferBack campaign, an effort to pressure the Israeli and Australian governments over the extradition.

 

August 2017: Nicole Meyer is awarded a confidential out-of-court settlement for damages.

This timeline gives us some critical details. It says that Mrs. Leifer was accused and expelled from Australia in March 2008. After she had been gone from Australia for a full three years, and had totally ceased being any kind of threat, rodef, meitzar ess harabim or anything of the kind to anybody in Australia, the three accusers instigated an indictment in Australia.

Why?

It was so that she can be punished in Australia by the Australian goyim.

The timeline also says that all three sisters sued the Adass school and received judgements or settlements. In short, they all received financial compensation. Thus, they cannot claim they are seeking justice for their injuries. That claim already went to civil court and they have been financially compensated. Consequently, as of then, all they want is vengeance at the hands of goyim.

In February of 2018, Mrs. Leifer was re-arrested in Israel and held in an Israeli prison for three years. At the end of 2020, Israeli Judge Chana Lomp finally ruled that Mrs. Leifer can be extradited back to Australia. The extradition was carried out in January 2021.

Since that time, Mrs. Leifer has been incarcerated in Australia. There were some preliminary hearings in September 2021 and again in March of 2022, but the main trial was set to take place beginning August 1, 2022. It was expected to last five weeks. This was initially pushed off two days and then until August 22. Nothing seemed to happen even then, and on Sept. 12, it was announced that the trial will actually commence on February 7, 2023.

Don’t hold your breath.

We are now up to date.

I’ve been writing about this case since June of 2016 when Dassi Erlich and her supporters posted petitions by which to involve the unwitting public. My goals at that time were to educate the Orthodox world that extraditing any Jewish person from Eretz Israel is a strict Torah prohibition. This was in the hope that the Orthodox world would desist from voicing their support and perhaps the accusers themselves will come to their senses and desist from this colossal Chillul Hashem.

Here is a short list from among the numerous posts I have written which explain in detail what is wrong here:

Thinking Like a Jew - The Halachic premise for my position. The “moral compass”.

There is No Ex-Tradition in our Tradition – The keynote post that says it all.

Victim Turned Predator – As it sounds.

Judging the Judges Part 2 – Understanding the backgrounds of the accused.

Flirting with Danger – Where this is all leading us to.

Dassi’s Lament – What does HKBH think of all this?

By Your Hand - TheSin of Nov – What is good for the goose is good for the gander.

EinMerachamim B’Din – Why not to apologize.

Revisiting Kamtza and Bar Kamtza – Sinas chinam in our time.

As a public service once again, I will reprint the main points that were listed in the Flirting with Danger post which make this campaign illegitimate:

1. It has not been established on Halachic grounds that Mrs. Leifer is guilty of anything. There was no confession and there is even no evidence that there was a crime. Note that not one of her accusers reported an assault, not to the school and not to the authorities, at the time that it allegedly happened. And they were all capable of doing so.

 

2.   Even if she is guilty of what she is being accused of, the activities are not felonious by Torah standards and don’t call for any extreme penalties. Not even judicial flogging. Claims of emotional and psychological injury to the victims are only personal injury claims and are monetary and not criminal.

 

3.   It is strictly forbidden to turn over any Jew to secular authorities for punishment that is not called for in Torah law. This is called mesira and is one of the gravest offenses possible. How much more so if no guilt or crime has been established.

 

4.   Transporting a person away from his home for enslavement or imprisonment when not sanctioned by the Torah is called Gonev Ish U’Mecharo and is a capital crime.

 

5.   There can be dispensations to the above two Halachos in the case of one who is currently and actively endangering others (rodef). Yosef’s brothers [mistakenly] thought so about him. [Un]fortunately, in our case, there is no situation of rodef currently in effect.

 

6.   Even in a case where mesira and or imprisonment could be justified, there is an independent prohibition of transporting the subject outside of Eretz Yisroel. This is extrapolated from the Halacha of the eved canaani in Yoreh Deah 267:85. (Note this is an extension of clause 267:84 which tells us that this prohibition applies in our day and age).

 

All of this does not add up to a pretty picture. And when you add to all this that the efforts to violate the Halacha with this extradition campaign and all the publicity that it generates is causing a colossal chillul Hashem, R”L, it doesn’t really make this campaign look like a good idea.

 

These are not “Halachic assertions”. They are basic Halacha. There is no room for debate.

 

It is sad to see misguided advocates and Rabbinical councils misuse their prestige and stature to fundamentally flaw the primacy of Halacha in the eyes of the Jewish consumer.

 

Indeed, I noted in my previous post when I referred to the Chaim Walder and Meshi-Zahav cases, that Mrs. Leifer cannot be compared to them for at least three reasons. According to the above list, there are at least four. Point 1 says that there is no proof of guilt. Point 2 says that this is not a case of sexual offense by Torah standards. Point 5 says that there is no situation of rodef nor meitzar ess harabbim, certainly in Australia where the mesira took place. And point 6 says that we are talking about extraditing a Jew out of Eretz Yisrael and this is forbidden in itself.

Now, I did note in some posts that if one could genuinely determine that Mrs. Leifer is an active threat in Eretz Yisrael, there may be a hetter to approach law enforcement here in Eretz Yisrael. Not only wasn’t this done, but ironically, Shana Aaronson and her [then] JCW staff spent thousands of shekels of their donors’ money to have Mrs. Leifer followed and tracked for 200 hours by a private investigator. While the investigator was able to substantiate that Mrs. Leifer is not psychotic and can function as a normal human being, he did not manage to capture a single minute of molestation.

I want to dwell for a moment on Point 2 from the 6 points of the Flirting with Danger post. This is the one that says that her offense, even as accused by her accusers, do not meet the standards of sexual assault by Torah standards. I explained this clearly in my preliminary post about Thinking Like a Jew that any activity that does not involve an adult male, human or animal, is not an act of giluy arayos (sex). Two women cannot engage in sex.

In today’s Western, woke, egalitarian world, this is not acknowledged. They can’t even define a woman. But we must behave in accordance to the standards of our Torah. As such, it is worthwhile re-examining HRHG Rav Elyashiv’s directives on handling these cases as he wrote to HRHG Rav Feivel Cohen, Shlita.

In his first letter, Rav Elyashiv mentioned the basic rule that for anybody (presumably except for the victim him or herself) to get involved in support of prosecuting a suspected Jewish miscreant, there needs to be firm evidence of the perpetrator’s guilt at the level of umdenah d’mukchach (irrefutable circumstantial evidence. Note- some want to nitpick on the language that implies that a lesser level, raglayim l’davar, is sufficient. Regardless, both umdenah d’mukchach and raglayim l’davar refer to indications that come from sources outside the sole testimony of the accuser. When all we have is the testimony of the accuser which is compromised by being a nogeah b’eidusan, as in this case, then there is not enough neemanus even to establish a raglayim l’davar).

In the second letter, he wrote two more stipulations. One is what I have repeatably written that each specific case must be vetted out by a qualified Talmid Chacham. Yet, in that letter there is a second stipulation which all parties overlook and, thus far, I haven’t quoted it either. In his letter he writes:

גם יש לשקול בגדר של ההתעוללות שבהשקפה שלהם היא אחרת לגמרי משלנו.

It is likewise necessary to assess the definition of abuse which, in their viewpoint, is totally different than ours.

As Rav Elyashiv, ZTL, so keenly writes, the non-Jews have different definitions of “sexual abuse” than we do. We are not allowed to prosecute our own people by their definitions.

This sentiment, which is clear daas Toras, is not original. This was clearly stated in the Chofetz Chaim’s Hilchos Lashon Hara in Klal 10:2 where he lists the conditions that are required for reporting one to civil authorities. As condition number 7, he states that it is imperative that this report to authorities does not bring about any type of repercussion more severe than if this same infraction were reported to a Beis Din at the height of its power.

In other words, if this is an infraction which at most would incur makos d’rabbanan (judicial flogging, usually only carried out after a warning was ignored) in Beis Din, and one is now subjecting the subject to long-term imprisonment at the hands of the non-Jews, this is out of the question.

In addition to all the above, I want to point out that the Malka Leifer case does not involve small children, but rather older teens who actually extended into legal adulthood. By our torah standards, the “age of consent” for a girl starts at 12. This is basically the same age that the perverts of the western world want to allow people to decide for themselves that they are eligible for transgender surgery.

Whether the accused took advantage of their vulnerabilities or not, nobody was actually forced into anything. Despite the denials of the accusers, there were plenty of people at the school to complain to in real time. The proof is that these are the same people they later sued in civil court for being responsible for their ordeals.

What is even more astounding is that the youngest of the three sisters, Elly Sapper, admitted in this article that she ignored her older sisters’ advice and voluntarily went to Mrs. Leifer in full knowledge of what was in store. And, yes, this very sister, Elly Sapper, who voluntarily approached Mrs. Leifer, was actually the first of the three sisters to file a complaint to the Australian police (see timeline above), and as such, she is the one who initiated the illegitimate indictment.

All the above teaches us that the Malka Leifer episode does not meet the standards that can be justified with this appalling Kol Koreh. Of course, here again, the promoters can claim that the Kol Koreh has nothing to do with the Malka Leifer episode. After all, the Kol Koreh was written in 2015 and the Mrs. Leifer was reported to the Australian police back in 2011. That’s four years earlier.  Did the Kol Koreh have any influence in the Malka Leifer saga?

I believe so.

For one thing, although there was only sparse coverage of the case over the first six years (2008-2014), it was only in 2016 which was a half year after the Kol Koreh, that the supporters posted the petitions with which to draw in the general public. The Halachically illegitimate petitions had overwhelming success as I reported in some of my posts. I believe that the Kol Koreh contributed to this to a large extent.

Sure, one could claim that those who signed the petitions are the non-chareidi Westernized consumerist Jews who do not incorporate daas Torah into their decision-making. They are those who don’t even read Mishpacha magazine and do not need their imprimatur to sign petitions like these. But did it influence the chareidi world?

I am not sure how directly, but I do know that the universal plague of automatic presumption of guilt which is strongly promoted by this Kol Koreh has poisoned the chareidi mind no less.

I think that this is evidenced by the way R. Dovid Lichtenstein carried the story in his Headlines radio program on Sept. 23, 2017. In the part of his program where he interviewed Dassi Erlich, he presented her claims as undisputed fact. He didn’t say, “We’re going to hear from a girl in Australia who claims she was molested by Malka Leifer…” but rather, “We’re going to hear from a girl in Australia who was molested by Malka Leifer…”. He is so positive about it that he feels justified to tack on the epithet שם רשעים ירקב in regard to Mrs. Leifer not once, but twice. On air!

Reb Lichtenstein does not question her narrative in any way, nor does he claim that he even made any attempt to contact Mrs. Leifer or anyone on her behalf to see if there is another version of the story. To him, the accuser’s story is automatically all true, no questions asked, and the accused is automatically a שם רשעים ירקב!

What is so disturbing is that it is very clear that Reb Dovid Lichtenstein is familiar with the teshuvos of HRHG Rav Elyashiv, ZTL, to Rav Feivel Cohen, Shlita since he discussed them on air in his interview with HRHG Rav Nachum Eisenstein, Shlita, on Jan. 23, 2016. The Malka Leifer case does not have umdenah d’mukchach and it does not even have a raglayim l’davar if all we have is the accuser’s testimony, it does not follow the Torah’s definitions of abuse, and it was not vetted out by any qualified Rabbanim prior to being reported in Australia. Incidentally, the definition of qualified Rav is one who knows the other two stipulations put out by Rav Elyashiv as well as the conditions of the Chofetz Chaim.

On top of this, in her interview, Ms. Erlich duly noted how her experiences made her question her religion. Not once did she mention consulting with any Rabbinic authority – qualified or not – before she, or her younger sister who is also irreligious, were moser Mrs. Leifer in Australia. No question there was no Beis Din that heard the case and sanctioned this mesira.

Dovid Lichtenstein’s self-imposed mandate is to explain and promote the Halacha, not to abrogate it. Even if her story has important lessons, I think it is disgraceful for him to proffer any type of support to an irreligious aggressor who is clearly not acting within darchei Torah. But I suppose, the flawed Kol Koreh and the other flawed sources that he quoted on his program gives him the “justification” that he wants.

The last issue to analyze in this case is, once we are dealing with a real-life occurrence, what kind of damage has it really done?

Before we take it on, we need to revisit the words of the Chofetz Chaim in Hilchos Shmiras Halashon 10:2 condition 7 (noted above) that it is imperative that this report to authorities does not bring about any type of repercussion more severe than if this same infraction were reported to a Beis Din.

We noted that one who is caught engaging in illicit female to female activities is first warned to desist, nothing more. If the warning is violated, there are makos d’rabbanan. This is carried out at the local Beis Din (בכל שעריך), after which the miscreant is sent back home to family life.

Halachic judicial punishments do not incarcerate people. They do not break up families and they do not send people to other localities and most certainly to outside of Eretz Yisrael to the hands of non-Jews. They are meant to discipline but not to destroy, to chasten people while preserving their lives and dignity and general well-being.

And all this is strictly when the punishments are warranted.

Not so here. We see with our eyes the alleged miscreant hounded, shamed, tormented and literally destroyed, kidnapped from home, sent out of Eretz Yisrael, incarcerated among the non-Jews and deprived of a life. Her family is forcibly broken up. Loss of any kind of parnassah and tons of legal expenses on all sides that do nothing but make lawyers rich.

None of this is sanctioned by the Torah or any Halacha. There is no rodef. There is no meitzar ess harabim. There was no Din Torah. And there is no justification for extradition even if the previous factors were in effect. There is no excuse for this damage.

As for the accusers, even if there is no social or financial damage to themselves (and I suspect there is plenty), by walking into the police station in Victoria to moser a person who left the country three years prior, and more so by actually bringing her back, they have entwined her into their personal lives in ways that can never be undone. The extradition and subsequent trial are dragging on and on and on. The accusers will be picked apart by the defense team and any dirty laundry that can be found will be put on display. If they get their conviction, they will have to live with the fallout of their unjustified mesira for the rest of their lives. If they don’t get their conviction, they will probably need to pay for it.

There is also damage to the supporters on both sides of the aisle. Jewish Community Watch (JCW) is now totally defunct. Both JCW and Shana Aaronson are in the hot seat for lawsuits if the accused is acquitted.

On the other side of the aisle, people who stood up for due process of law, for basic compassion, and for the kavod of Torah and Halacha and kedushas Eretz Yisrael, and who were basically doing their moral and civic duties, were publicly defamed and maligned. This includes Mrs. Leifer’s legal team, Rav Yitzchak Grossman, Rav Mendel Shafran, Rav Yaakov Litzman and even yours truly.

Worst of all, all this has resulted in a horrific Chillul Hashem and bizayon Hatorah. The Satan is laughing and the Shechina is crying.

And the most horrifying thing is that most people I hear from are celebrating this wreckage and rooting for it. I suppose this includes Reb Dovid Lichtenstein, Reb Dovid J. Nyer, the promoters and signatories of the Kol Koreh, and even some close friends and relatives of mine.

Sadly, all who are in favor of this nezek and Chillul Hashem have a cheilek in it.

I will not.