In Bad Faith – A Book[cover] Review

 

Author’s Note and Preface -

Over the past eight weeks, the horrible events of Simchas Torah and the ensuing war has dominated our consciousness and does not leave room for outdated topics such as my persistent coverage of the Leifer-Erlich debacle. Yet, aside from dominating our consciousness, the war has also been dominating our consciences. We understand that we have entered a period of midas hadin and cheshbon hanefesh. We understand that we must be unified and supportive of one another and relent on sinas chinam and petty grievances.

The Satan is now standing in front of HKBH and detailing our failings. We need all the zechusim that we can muster and anything that will bring a kitrug (accusation) against any part of Klal Yisrael, and certainly upon meticulously religious Jews can, R”L, lead to disaster. As such, at a time like this, the last thing that Klal Yisrael needs is to see a disgruntled Jewish person publish a book whose primary goal is motzi shem rah, to malign and vilify a devout Jewish community – especially on false pretenses. And this, at a time of escalating antisemitism when Jew-haters worldwide jump on any pretext to demonize our nation.

For this reason, I think it is imperative to write this pre-review with the hopes of dissuading the relevant parties of releasing the book. At the very least, it is an official מחאה.

I began working on this post before the chagim and it is meant to immediately follow my post on The [Dis]Honest Truth that was published on October 1, 2023 – only six days before the horrible event. It is important to see that post as a preamble to this one.

For those who are new to my blog and are unfamiliar with this episode, I recommend them to see this post (HERE) which includes a timeline of events and links to many other relevant posts on the topic.

Yes, indeed, this post is very long. Therefore, you may want to skip straight to My Conclusions at the end (and read the rest later).

 

 

in bad faith – A Book[cover] Review

 

There is a well-known saying: Don’t judge a book by its cover.

The truth about this saying is that it is a metaphor for people. Many of us are not the people we appear to be at first glance. When you encounter people whom you do not really know, don’t be swayed solely by outward appearances. But, of course, it certainly does apply to books and to the packaging of all types of products. The cover, or the wrapper, is specifically designed to portray what is inside, or at least, what the producer wants you to think is inside, so that you will be interested in it, even though it may not be honest and “truthful”.

This concept is so ancient that our Chazal also tipped us off using a similar metaphor (Avos 4:27):

אל תסתכל בקנקן אלא במה שיש בו

Do not look at the container but rather at what is inside. There are new containers that contain old [mellowed] wine. And there are old containers that do not even contain new harsh wine.

It figures that there wasn’t a big selection of books in those days, and none of them had covers.

We don’t always have the opportunity to sample the wine before we purchase. Nor do we always get the opportunity to read the book. Especially if the book has not yet been published. If this is the case, then there is nothing to judge except the preliminary cover.

Dassi Erlich has announced the future publication of what she calls an autobiography which is scheduled for release on January 31, 2024. Hence, the book will not be released for almost another two months. I would love to get a review copy – even at my expense – to give the book a thorough review. I even contacted the publisher to see if I can get all or some of it for review. To my utter surprise and astonishment, my magnanimous offer was turned down. What a pity!

I guess I will just have to wait it out. Maybe I'll preorder. 

But there seems to be a proposed cover with a proposed title. I say “proposed” because sometimes there are changes before the final release. This may not turn out to be the actual cover.

In this case, however, we have a bit more than just a cover. The publisher has an official promotional page on the web with a brief synopsis of the book. You can see it HERE. The synopsis looks to be relatively straight forward and probably quite accurately describes what the book is about. Yet, as in the cover, I see in it several “allegations” which I believe are false and misleading.

This review will discuss the synopsis as well, but I am primarily concerned about the cover because the cover is meant to sell the book from the stands, not the synopsis on the promo page. 

I know a lot about designing book covers. I did one myself. No part of it is an accident. A book cover is an advertisement for what is inside. And, like typical professional advertisements, they are designed to broadcast subliminal messages.

And so, even if I cannot [yet] judge the book, I can judge the cover. So, let's have a look at the book cover which is displayed above. 

 

A typical book cover has four basic elements (in order of importance):

• The proposed title
  
  
• The proposed subtitle
  
  
• A pictorial image
  
  
• The name of the author[s]

To make for a smoother flow in my analysis, I will modify the order:

1. The authors
   
   
2. The title
   
   
3. The image
   
   
4. The subtitle

Element 1 - The Authors

I will begin with a brief comment about the authors. The main author is Dassi Erlich. She needs no introduction. What I find interesting is the co-author. Her name is Ellen Whinnett. I know nothing about her except what I can find on Google. Apparently, she is an award-winning journalist and author based in Melbourne. Yet, I will go out on a limb and assume that she is not Jewish and, consequently, does not know a lot about Judaism except what Dassi Erlich told her. She can correct me if I am wrong on either point. We will see the significance of this as we progress.

 

Element 2 – The Title

The title is: in bad faith

What does the title say to us?

Well…

Faith = Religion

Bad = Not good; negative

Bad Faith = Negative things about religion.

The title is meant to tell us what this book is about. This book is about a bad religion.

And this is astounding. Why?

Because we thought this book is about sexual abuse and Dassi’s brave struggle for justice. Now, this subject may be covered in the book, but evidently, this must not be the main theme of the book. There is no suggestion of it in the title – or in the subtitle as we shall soon see.

So, the book is an indictment on some religion. And who wrote it? A non-Jew and a secularized Jew. Thus, we have two liberal, secular women writing a book about a religion.

Before one can discuss faith and whether it is good or bad, one must define it.

What is the faith? What is it based on? What makes our faith different than others at the rudimentary level?

What are the rights, privileges, and obligations of the faithful?

What is the purpose of Creation and our role in life?

If the “faith” is so insular and restrictive and burdensome, as it is portrayed by those who do not participate, why are so many people happy to be part of it? What is the upside?

The faith of all Orthodox Jews is based on 13 principles. I wonder how many of them, if any, is Dassi going to discuss in her book? It’s a lot more than “no television, books, movies, Internet or sex education”. None of these are tenets of the faith. They are merely safeguards to protect our young from hedonistic outside influences that conflict with the tenets of the faith.

So, the question is, is there really an honest discussion about faith in this book? And, if not, is the title an honest title?

There is a lot more to comment on this, but it will wait until the final section when we discuss the subtitle on the cover and the synopsis on the promo page. That is the main body of this post.

There is only one more thing to comment on regarding the title. The text of the title is written totally in lower case letters.

Why?

The obvious answer is that it is done for visual effect. The visual effect is dominated by the image on the cover, so we will discuss this in conjunction with the cover image which is in the next section.

After I further analyze the title and its lettering in the coming sections, the inevitable conclusion is that it is false and misleading.

 

Element 3 – The Pictorial Image

A picture is worth 1000 words.

A picture should be truthful. Not manipulated and not a piece of propaganda – unless, of course, the entire book is a piece of propaganda.

The book’s cover sports a picture of a very young girl who I estimate to be between the ages of five to seven years old. Presumably this is an actual photo of Dassi Erlich at that age. Why that age?

It is meant to give the reader a first-glance impression that her alleged ordeals of sexual abuse at the hands of the evil Mrs. Leifer took place at the tender age of six or seven. This is amplified by the trick of lettering the title totally in lowercase text. Lowercase text suggests “young”, “babyish”, not grown-up, an unripe innocent child.

The idea it is trying to broadcast is pedophilia. Meaning, what pedophilia really is, which is abusing young, small children who haven’t reached puberty. The underage picture and the lower-case title are there to present this episode as a case of pedophilia. The false message of the cover is that this Jewish “faith” (i.e., sect or cult) is rife with pedophilia.

I wonder if the exaggerated term “pedophile” appears in the book. One thing is certain, Dassi explicitly called Mrs. Leifer a pedophile on her Facebook page on July 21, 2023.

The big lie is that the events that involved Malka Leifer did not occur when Dassi was a small child. They began when she was a fully bloomed teenager post puberty. One who lusts over a fully bloomed female may be a pervert and a sexual offender, but they are not a pedophile.

When the alleged events began, Dassi Erlich was 15 years old and her older sister, Nicole, was 17. They were not as naïve as they present themselves. This is an age when, in the outside world, most females have already engaged in sexual activity. I was told that, at the time, these sisters were being pursued by some hormone driven uncouth neighborhood boys. They were quite aware of sexual chemistry and the challenges of chastity. They were not wallflowers.

This is only half the illusion of the cover image. The other half is the way Dassi is dressed in the image. She is shown dressed in what appears to be a Puritan costume. She is wearing a black holiday (shabbosdige) dress which is supplemented by a headscarf or cowling and a swatch of cloth coming down from her waist that appears to be an apron. I cannot discern if this is an actual photograph or a photoshop manipulation.

If it is an actual photograph, then it is certainly either a Purim costume where she is dressed as a grownup or a school program when a girl is chosen to play-act a Jewish mother in the role of Shabbos mother (ima shel shabbat). Whichever, it is clearly a masquerade. It is not her daily attire. But, of course, the purpose of this picture is to give the potential buyer/reader the false impression that this is how six-year-old children in the ultra-Orthodox “sect” must be dressed. If it is photoshopped, then the photo is totally false, and the lie is even more egregious.

To see how Dassi and the women of the Adass community, including Mrs. Leifer herself, really dressed and kept their hair, refer to this article from ABC Australia News.  

What impression is the masquerade intended to convey?

It is trying to portray an oppressive misogynistic society straight out of Handmaid’s Tale. Or the concept of the Islamic Hijab and child bride. Yes, of course, Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox women must cover their hair after marriage, but in this society even a natural wig with or without a pillbox cap will do. It is also meant to convey Puritanical childhood innocence. Again, I must repeat that the alleged incidents did not occur at this young innocent age.

My conclusion: The photograph of Dassi is intentionally false and misleading.

 

Element 4 - The Subtitle

The subtitle is the most descriptive part of the cover. The subtitle tells us clearly what the book is about. It is a mini synopsis. The other two elements (title and image) are only suggestive. 

I noted above that there is also a real synopsis on the publisher’s promo page. This synopsis is about nine paragraphs long, topped by a banner headline. The headline is almost identical to the subtitle of the book that we are about to discuss. Like many misleading headlines, it does not precisely reflect the text that follows. Superfluous to say, the exact text of the subtitle/headline is essential. When you condense a nine-paragraph synopsis into a one-line headline or subtitle, it follows that the message of those brief words is the primary message that you want to convey. The remainder is expendable.

The current subtitle reads as follows:

Inside an Ultra-Orthodox sect and the truth of Malka Leifer’s brutal betrayal that it tried to hide

Notice something?

There is absolutely no mention in the subtitle of Dassi Erlich as in: “Dassi Erlich’s Journey…” or “Dassi’s Struggle for Justice…” or even “A Young Woman’s Ordeal…”. This is indeed mentioned in the text of the synopsis, but the synopsis does not show up on the book cover. As such, we learn that Dassi’s struggle for justice is not of primary importance. 

The most important thing that Dassi wants us (i.e., all potential readers) to know, is what the Adass community is really about. She needs to tell the world about what happens inside an “Ultra-Orthodox sect”. This means that this book is about an Ultra-Orthodox sect. It is, thus, not primarily an autobiography of Dassi Erlich. It is not her life story. It is an exposé of what goes on inside an Ultra-Orthodox sect, only it is written in first person by one who was there. 

The rest of the subtitle, which I will shortly analyze in detail, indicates that this book will reveal some “truth” that the “sect” is trying “to hide”. This indicates that what is in this book are things the “sect” would not want us to know. Probably because it is detrimental or damaging to the “sect”. The terms “brutal betrayal” and “try to hide” give this away. When you combine this with the title which reads “in bad faith”, it suggests that this book does not have many nice things to say about the “sect”.

As such, we can already see just from the cover, that this work is a work of lashon hara or motzi shem rah, depending on whether her information is true or not. This, in turn, opens the question of whether any observant Jew is allowed to read the book for recreational purposes or to be “in the know”. It would seem to be Halachically forbidden. (I plan to read it for more meaningful purposes.) 

With this in mind, we can scrutinize the wording of the subtitle (also the headline of the synopsis). Here we go:

Inside = Behind the scenes

Ultra-Orthodox = Jewish Fundamentalist

Sect = Cult

The term “sect” doesn’t always mean a cult. I checked a few online dictionaries and the most common definition I got was along the lines of:

Cambridge:

a religious group that has separated from a larger religion and is considered to have extreme or unusual beliefs or customs

a religious group with beliefs that make it different from a larger or more established religion it has separated from

 

 

Merriam-Webster:

a dissenting or schismatic religious body, especially one regarded as extreme or heretical

 

Dictionary.com

a body of persons adhering to a particular religious faith; a religious denomination.

 

a group regarded as heretical or as deviating from a generally accepted religious tradition.

  

Although some definitions are more subtle, the common denominator is that a sect is heretical, extreme, and deviant. And that it deviated from a larger group as if to form a new entity. In general, it implies an illegitimate breakaway. 

Ironically, this connotation of “sect” is the exact opposite of “fundamentalist”. Fundamentalist is the father organization that established the rules and adheres to them. A sect implies a deviant breakaway and heretical group that does not follow the rules of the established religion. Hence, even though we may often see the term “a fundamentalist sect”, by definition, it is really an oxymoron. 

I think most of us would agree that we can call Adass a fundamentalist community. Nobody argues that it is not strict and insular as is the norm of any Chareidi community worldwide. And it is certainly not deviant or heretical. It probably fits the description of Judaism in the Talmud and Shulchan Aruch closer than any other Jewish group in Melbourne. On the contrary, most more lenient and liberal streams of Judaism actually deviated from the Talmudic model that Adass embodies. Those would be the illegitimate outliers, the “sects” of Judaism.

Perhaps I should be happy that she is not using the term “cult”. This implies a more sinister, controlling and evil deviant group. But it is certain that the term “Ultra-Orthodox sect” is going to conjure up this connotation. 

Besides, Dassi Erlich indeed considers the Adass community to be a cult. She said so explicitly in her June 19 interview on a Christian podcast called Mindshift Podcast. The title of the episode is: My Fight for Justice: Surviving a Cult & Sexual Abuse (with Dassi Erlich). She cannot be sure that Adass is “fundamentalist” because she has her own secret definition of the term, but she is convinced that it can be called a “cult”.

Hence, Dassi’s depiction of the Adass community as a breakaway, deviant cult is false and defamatory. But it gets worse. Let’s look at the synopsis in the publisher’s promo page. Let’s look at the headline. Here is what it says:

In Bad Faith: Inside a Secret Ultra-Orthodox Sect and the Betrayal it Tried to Hide

The headline of the promo is almost identical to the subtitle. Almost. There are a few major differences. The most obvious and glaring is the insertion of the term “Secret”. We are not just going inside an Ultra-Orthodox sect, it is a Secret Ultra-Orthodox sect.

Is this true?

Before we answer this, we must notice that for some strange reason, this word is not repeated in the following synopsis. In the sensational headline it is “Secret” but in the synopsis it is merely “Closed”. Why is it only closed and no longer secret?

Hard to say because both attributes are false.

The Adass community is not secret. It is like every Chareidi community in the world. It is fundamental Judaism. The chareidim are mainstream Jews who live by the laws of the Talmud. They have always done so ever since the Talmud was canonized. Our laws and ways have been “on the books” for centuries. We add new material to be up to date, but we never abandon the old. It is visible to all. Anybody in the world can read our texts and come and watch us bake matzos. Anyone is welcome to come to our circumcisions and see how metzitza is done. We have no secrets and nothing to hide.

Nor is it closed. Chazal tell us (Kiddushin 66a): הרי כרוכה ומונחת בקרן זוית כל הרוצה ללמוד יבוא וילמוד

The Torah is bundled and laying in an intersection. All who want to come and study it may come and study it.

No, it is not secret and it is not closed. So, what is it?

It is alien. To an outsider it is alien. To those who are not Jewish, such as Ms. Whinnett, or to those Jews who have alienated themselves from their heritage, it is alien. It is a foreign culture. It is based on a very different thought process than the Western world. So, it is alien and strange. But it is not secret. It is not Skull and Bones or Opus Dei. There are no secret rituals or hazing or membership rites or swearing to secrecy. We have no secrets.

The synopsis notes: 

the strict confines of the Adass community's countless religious rules. This strict interpretation of the Torah would see Dassi and her siblings isolated from secular and immodest Australian society.

The countless religious rules are the rules of our Shulchan Aruch. They are adhered to by Adass but they are not Adass’s rules. And what about being “isolated from secular and immodest Australian society”?

Firstly, the text of the synopsis is admitting that Australian society is secular and immodest. It did not say “pristine and virtuous Australian society” but “secular and immodest”. So, there is no argument there. Why should devoutly religious people not shelter their young from “secular and immodest” society?

And what license do the authors, who are members of the secular and immodest society, have to castigate those who want to shelter themselves and their children from it?

True, we have always been insular. See Numbers 23:9. Just check out the opening scenes of Fiddler on the Roof. But we are not forcibly insular. The Talmud tells us that this world is shaped like the Hebrew letter “heh” - ה. It has no bottom. Why does it have no bottom? So that anyone who wants to leave, may leave.

But there is a small opening at the top left. Why is that there?

This is for those who wish to come in. As such, there are throngs of converts who voluntarily knock on our doors because they have studied the “countless religious rules” and see the wisdom and divinity in them. We don’t invite them and we don't recruit them. In fact, we even try to discourage them, but they come anyway.

Neither does the community implement any invasive or punitive measures to enforce the rules. The prevailing attitude is: If you do something we don’t like, we don’t want to know about it. In case we find out about it, we will denounce it. But we won’t flog anybody, no prison stocks, and no scarlet letters. It basically works on an honor system. This is because most adherents to “the faith” want to stick to the rules.

Let us continue with the text of the subtitle:

and the truth of Malka Leifer’s brutal betrayal

Once I don’t see much truth in the title or the image, I think it may be questionable here, as well. In my earlier post, The DisHonest Truth, I noted how often truth is only in the basic fact, but not in the tone or the “spin” or the exaggeration. Or, as we say, the way it is colored. So, let us reserve judgement on this truth and examine “Malka Leifer’s brutal betrayal”.

I will not deny the element of “betrayal”. Certainly, Mrs. Leifer is supposed to be a role model and protector and a trustworthy guardian. If the allegations against her are true at all, she definitely betrayed that trust.

However, one does not stand trial and go to prison for betraying trust. None of the 74 or 29 counts against Mrs. Leifer was for betrayal of trust. They were for abusive acts – molestation and r^pe. We don’t usually say that an abuser betrayed their victim. We say that the abuser abused their victim or the molester molested their victim. They took advantage of the victim’s vulnerability. They exploited their victim.

Betrayal usually means that there are three parties involved. One is the double-crosser who befriends and takes responsibility for the welfare of the “victim” but, in truth, works for the benefit of the aggressor to the detriment of the victim. Predators exploit and traitors betray.

Even if there is an element of betrayal, since Mrs. Leifer was an authority figure, this is certainly the collateral issue (tafel) and not the primary one (ikar). So why focus on the betrayal?

I’ll get back to this shortly.

What disturbs me more is the adjective “brutal” betrayal. Like all subjective adjectives – “noisily praying” when nobody outside can really hear it and it plays no role in the narrative, or “hitting me murderously” when nobody got hurt - it is there to color the story for maximum shock effect.

This is what we call a spin.

Yes, it is a splendid alliteration and “brutal” melds smoothly with “betrayal”. It rolls right off the tongue and has a nice ring to it, but is it honest?

What does brutal mean?

Brutal = Malicious and by force in the face of resistance; extremely violent, bloody; cruel, heartless, ruthless; as in, “I begged her to stop and she wouldn’t” or “I tried everything I could to get away but couldn’t”.

It sends a message of unequivocal victimhood. The victim had no contribution to the ordeal – not before, not during, and not after.

In my previous post, I went out of my way to describe what a brutal betrayal really is. In my opinion, this episode doesn’t come close.

I noted above that these sisters were not as pure and naïve as they were making themselves out. They came from an abusive home where they were beaten, humiliated, starved, and abandoned. I have no idea whether social services intervened or not, but they were a textbook case for intervention.

According to them, Mrs. Leifer took advantage of this situation and gave them a feeling of love and warmth. They claim that she started doing invasive things, but they did not complain to anyone. They let it continue and came back for more for four long years, according to Dassi, and even 6.5 years according to Nicole the Elder. I have written in several posts that Elly Sapper got involved on her own volition even after her own sisters warned her and she knew the dangers.

Now, one can claim that they were exploited for many years, but it is hard to say they were betrayed for many years. In general, one is only betrayed once. And, even if it was treacherous, cunning, or deceitful (more truthful adjectives), it didn’t have to happen more than once.

Brutal means there was nothing they could do to stop it at any point. It implies a total self-exoneration and, with it, a total lack of personal accountability. This episode doesn’t look brutal to me.

Let’s go on to the end of the subtitle:

that it tried to hide

This is the most disturbing and misleading part of the subtitle.

That it tried to hide – that who tried to hide?

The Ultra-Orthodox Sect, of course.

This implies that while Mrs. Leifer was engaging in her four to six plus year-long brutal betrayal, the Ultra-Orthodox sect knew all about it and tried to hide it.

This is a total lie. The “sect” knew nothing about it. For all the four to six plus years.

How do I know?

Dassi Erlich said it straight out in her Headlines interview on Sept. 23, 2017 (31:50). Her exact words were, “Like no one had ever dealt with anything like this before, they had no idea.” And why did they have no idea?

Because Dassi and both her sisters and anybody else who may have been harmed by Mrs. Leifer did not tell anybody. Up until 2008, the community had no idea that anything was going on. One cannot be hiding something they are not aware of. One cannot be hiding something that is being hidden from them!

[As a side note, the statement that "no one had ever dealt with anything like this before" is a testament by Dassi Erlich, that events such as these are not normal or common events in this "secret, closed" Ultra-Orthodox "sect".]

It is hard for me to accept that the accusers allowed this alleged business to go on for four years and they didn’t tell anybody. They tried to imply that there was nobody to tell. But somehow, they ultimately managed to find somebody they didn’t tell to be sued. And, what about their parents and older siblings?

Apparently, the school was initially told of the allegations in March of 2008, and at that time, and virtually up to the present, they remained exactly that – allegations. Bear in mind that the Sapper sisters were at-risk kids. The school reached out to them and helped them in all kinds of ways during all kinds of crises. They were never known to be the most trustworthy girls in the neighborhood. As such, when the allegations broke out, the community members had no reason to take them seriously.

Mrs. Leifer was confronted and vehemently denied the allegations. The perspective of the school was one person’s word against the other and clearly, to them, Mrs. Leifer was the more reliable person. So, from the perspective of the “sect” there were nothing but allegations. Period.

Still, since the allegations could be true, the “sect” took immediate decisive action and deported Mrs. Leifer back to Israel. True or not, she became a liability that needed to be defused. But it still stood as mere allegations. At that time, there were no criminal charges against her, nor was there any real evidence, as we know to be the case to this day. It is hard for me to envision what possible legal complaint there can be against the school board.

Once the allegations were no longer relevant to the community and there was no need or purpose to make any public fuss about it, they kept the matter quiet. This is natural. Mrs. Leifer was gone and she had claimed innocence. At that point, it no longer made any difference, except to be more watchful in the future. The alleged activities were not perpetrated by the “sect” and there was nothing for them to hide.

As such, the “sect” didn’t really hide anything. But who really did hide what was going on (if it was going on)?

Dassi Erlich and Elly Sapper and Nicole Meyer. They hid all of it from the school until after it was done – for the three of them, at least. Whereupon, they turned right around and filed lawsuits against the board of the school for the unproven allegations of events that they knowingly hid from them!

Now, I noted above that, barring the alleged antics of Mrs. Leifer, which the school in no way aided, or abetted, or supported, the community reached out to these sisters and did their utmost to help them. They gave them food when they were denied food at home, and put them up places to sleep when they were thrown out. And I was told that they took them into the school and waived the tuition charges from the non-paying parents.

Mrs. Leifer and other community members continued to assist them in their adult lives. The school let all three sisters stay on as student teachers after they graduated. Nicole Meyer even stayed on to become a permanent teacher. I was told that the first time Elly Sapper got engaged, Elly was in Israel, and Mrs. Leifer, all the way from Australia, arranged for a social hall in a shul in Har Nof to host her engagement at absolutely no cost to her of her family. So, while they claimed to be exploited, and perhaps they were, they didn’t turn down the perks that came with it.

Throughout all of this, they hid their allegations from the entire community. And when they finally erupted, they sued the school board. They also demanded a formal apology, but when they couldn’t get one to their liking, they stormed out of the meeting and then disclosed the details of the meeting to the public. Not only that, but from 2008 until this very day, Dassi Erlich is pursuing the school board to be prosecuted for allowing Mrs. Leifer to get away as a breach of mandated reporting.

But something doesn’t fit here. Nicole stayed on at the school as a teacher even while her “abuser”, Mrs. Leifer, was working there as well. Nicole became a teacher at the school in 2005. She was working shoulder to shoulder with the brutally abusive Mrs. Leifer for three years, the beginning of which were years that allegedly Dassi and Elly were being abused!

And Nicole knew it and let it happen!

From the entire school faculty, she alone she knew it. She had become an authority figure and was certainly a mandated reporter, and she knew what nobody else at the school knew. Doesn’t that make her an accessory to a crime? Why was she not arrested and charged?

So, as I see it, this is certainly a tale of bad faith and brutal betrayal, but who betrayed who?

To conclude this part, I don’t think the truth about the brutal betrayal is really all that true.

Before I close, I want to return to the synopsis in the promotion page. I noted above that the banner headline is almost identical to the subtitle on the book but there are some not-so-subtle differences. Here, again, is what the headline says:

In Bad Faith: Inside a Secret Ultra-Orthodox Sect and the Betrayal it Tried to Hide

I already discussed the first and most obvious difference, that it throws in the word “Secret” as a modifier to the term “Ultra-Orthodox sect” and in the opening paragraph it calls it “closed”. I stated above that both terms are false. The “sect” is not secret or closed, but alien.

The other differences are the missing words. Firstly, the banner headline makes absolutely no mention of Malka Leifer. (There is also no mention of truth.) Secondly, it does not refer to the “betrayal” as “brutal”.

Why are these important?

In the subtitle on the book cover, it is clear that the “traitor” is Malka Leifer. It was Malka Leifer’s brutal betrayal. And, presumably, the “sect” is trying to hide it. Not so the promo page headline. Since there is no mention of Malka Leifer, it talks only about the Ultra-Orthodox sect. It indicates that the book is about an Ultra-Orthodox sect’s betrayal – brutal or not, not Malka Leifer’s. The Ultra-Orthodox sect betrayed the author – not yet named – and they are trying to hide their own betrayal!

What a lie.

But it tells me something very important which is the main point of this whole review. And it is something that I have known all along from as far back as 2016.

This entire episode, and hence the book, is not about Malka Leifer. It’s about Adass. It’s about the Ultra-orthodox sect. Yes indeed, Malka Leifer is the key player here and, per the subtitle, the real instigator of the brutal betrayal, but she is not the target of this defamatory book.

It is the Adass community.

I see this from one final false allegation toward the end of the synopsis. In the main, the synopsis itself is straightforward and nicely written. To a large extent, it clarifies the misconceptions that are implied in the headline – except for one line in paragraph 7.  

In paragraph seven it reads: When the community supported Leifer and helped her avoid justice by putting her on a plane to Israel…

This is patently false.

I went to great lengths previously to point out that the community never supported Leifer. Nor can it be said that they had any intentions of helping her to avoid justice by putting her on a plane to Israel.

Firstly, there is no support or sanction for these kinds of activities in Jewish law or tradition. Secondly, the community had no clue that anything was amiss all through her employment. This is because her alleged victims, including the author, never told anybody. Thirdly, Mrs. Leifer denied the allegations. Fourthly, the credibility quotient of the Sapper sisters was not at optimal level. The community had no reason to accept the allegations as factual.

Despite this, they did not take any chances and they immediately terminated her and sent her away. There were not yet any criminal charges filed against her. She was not a fugitive of the law. With this plus the doubt of whether the allegations are even true – what we call “presumption of innocence” - it cannot be claimed that they were helping her avoid justice. She wasn’t wanted. Not by the police and not by them.

It can be claimed that they did it to protect themselves and to protect the community. These are virtuous motives. I salute them for that, and I think everybody should.

Once she was gone, there was no reason to try to bring her back. This would not serve anybody’s interest except Dassi’s. As such, they were rightfully opposed to bringing her back and stirring up more trouble. There was no reason to support Mrs. Leifer and there was no reason to support Dassi and her sisters, either. Mrs. Leifer may have crossed some lines, but from the perspective of the school, who was totally kept in the dark by Dassi and her sisters, it was a mishap that they were not aware of. There was no hiding, no supporting, and no sanctioning.

But Dassi lives in an egocentric world. In her mind, if someone does not dutifully believe everything she says just because she says it, and is not supporting her cause and helping her on her self-imposed quest for “justice”, then they are ipso facto actively supporting her opponents. This was made clear from her meeting with Rabbi Mendel Shafran and her refusal to accept the school’s apologies as offered. As such, to Dassi Erlich, the Adass community who helped her so much, and who immediately cast out Malka Leifer from their midst despite no proof of guilt, are her mortal enemies and need to be demonized in her book.

Since the Adass community is truly no different than any other Chareidi community in the world, and we can start with Meah Shearim and Beis Yisrael, Bnei Brak, Kiryat Sefer, numerous other Israeli communities, Williamsburg, Boro Park, Lakewood, Stamford Hill, parts of Monsey, Antwerp, Montreal, etc., her indictment is an indictment on the entire Chareidi world.

I recognized this from the start, and this is why I have invested so much energy into this episode. My primary goal was not to “defend” Mrs. Leifer, although all of my defenses are valid, but to defend this assault on the entire Chareidi world. This is my mandate in One Above and Seven Below.

 

My Conclusions

Dassi Erlich and Ms. Whinnett plan on publishing a tale of bad faith and betrayal. The question is: who’s betrayal?

Nobody doubts that Dassi Erlich has suffered a difficult life. And it looks like she has no shortage of folks to blame for it. The purpose of her book is to do the blaming.

There are three primary villains in her life - her parents, the Adass community and school, and Mrs. Leifer. Of the three, the Adass school is by far the least culpable. But this is the one she is persecuting with her book. The subtitle says so.

The subtitle and the headline in the synopsis confirm what I have known all along. This whole episode is not about Malka Leifer. It is about the Adass community. Moreover, it is about “ultra-Orthodox” Judaism in general. Malka Leifer is just a vehicle to allow her to demonize the entire establishment.

Perhaps the inside of the book says differently, but the cover proclaims that Dassi is applying all her allegations to the entire sect. No, I cannot see them as betraying Dassi Erlich. I see her as the one who is betraying them. Brutally. Dassi is brutally betraying the Adass community with her lawsuits, with her persecution of them for “letting the evil woman get away”, and with her defamatory book. None of which has any justification.

The synopsis calls it “an honest, harrowing but ultimately inspiring story”. Perhaps the story in the book will be more honest than the cover. But I see no reason to expect it.

If Dassi Erlich wants to write an honest book about Mrs. Leifer and her struggle for justice, let her write that inside and outside and put an honest picture of her current self on the cover. If she wants to write a book about her abusive upbringing at home, let her write that inside and outside and put an honest picture of how her parents dressed her at home on the cover. If she wants to write a positive book about the school that reached out to her, let her write that inside and outside and put an honest picture of her in school clothes on the cover.

In all cases, the title must go.

I am curious about one more thing: Is this book classified as non-fiction or fiction?

As I see it:

• The title is fiction
  
  
• The implied message of the lower-case text is fiction
  
  
• The Puritanical garb in the image is fiction
  
  
• The overall implication that Dassi was abused by Mrs. Leifer as a little girl is fiction
  
  
• “Sect” is fiction
  
  
• Brutality is fiction
  
  
• Hiding is fiction
  
  
• “Secret” is fiction
  
  
• “Closed” is fiction
  
  
• The classification of Mrs. Leifer as a pedophile is fiction (I don’t know if it’s in the book, but Dassi wrote it on Facebook)
  
  
• The claim that the Adass community supported Mrs. Leifer (synopsis) is fiction
  
  
• “Honest” is definitely fiction

With all this fiction, I must conclude that the claim of the synopsis that this is a “true story” is also fiction.

I like a good work of fiction. I can’t wait for the book to come out – if it does. I may actually read it.

If the book has as much motzi shem rah as the cover and the synopsis do, it will make for a thrilling and harrowing and hazardous read. But not an honest one.

In Bad Faith is a book about religion written by the irreligious. It was written by the faithless about the faithful. It is definitely not objective. I don’t believe it was written in good faith.