Arrur Makkah Re'eihu B'Seter - Part 2c: Good Intentions

 

We know the old saying – The path to Gehinnom is paved with good intentions. 

This is how the Yetzer Hara operates. He convinces us to undertake virtuous projects for the good of Mankind or society or the downtrodden or whatever, and then he bundles it with sinister and damaging consequences which are naively condoned for “the greater good”. 

I’ve written a lot about this especially regarding mesira the poisonous Kol Koreh of 181 “Rabbis”.

The Yetzer Hara has a very easy time when the “Good Samaritans” are low on scruples such as with the Tea Dating Advice app. The official narrative about the Tea Dating Advice app, which inspired these posts, was that it is meant to help vulnerable women vet out potential predators from the dating pool. But the critics note that this is no reason to hide the posted information from the eyes of the male population. Regardless, the site has been called out for being the cesspool of gossip and slander that it always was.

Likewise, Jewish Community Watch, with their despicable Wall of Shame, has a similar history. This is what they write on their About Us page:

Jewish Community Watch (JCW) never set out to be a major organization. In 2006, Meyer Seewald’s best friend died tragically at age 17. The young man’s father set up a youth group in his late son’s honor where young teens gathered for camaraderie and support. In 2011, Seewald, himself a survivor of child sexual abuse (CSA), began receiving reports that the father was molesting boys who attended this program. Further enquiries revealed that this person had a long history of abuse dating back decades earlier to Israel. As is so often the case, community leaders and rabbis in New York who were aware of his dangerous history preferred to handle it “internally,” never considering how many more lives would be put in jeopardy.

After a website was set up to expose the molester and warn others of the danger he posed, hundreds of reports of abuse began flooding in from Jewish communities around the world. JCW’s scope of services quickly expanded to include victim support services, mass awareness events, staff screening for schools and camps, a website with hundreds of pages of resources, and much more. The staff grew from a handful of volunteers working out of a 10 x 10 bedroom to over a dozen professional employees. A virtual “safe place” has been created for victims to come forward, tell their stories, and receive the help and support they need.

All of this sounds great, but there was one fundamental flaw. JCW decided that the best way to help victims is to hunt down and prosecute perpetrators regardless of whether it really helps victims or causes more harm than good. Also, regardless of whether these perpetrators were as guilty as presumed to be, whether they were past victims themselves, and even not guilty at all. 

JCW became a vigilante posse and kangaroo court. Hurting the people they didn’t like was more important than helping the ones that they did. You know the saying – When all you have is a hammer, everything you see starts to look like a nail.

As an update, I noted in my previous post that JCW mercifully went offline about a year ago. Well, amazingly, in the beginning of September, their web site came back to life. It doesn’t look like the organization came back, just their 2022 web site with all it’s gory. 

Once again, Rabbi Yosef Blau is accountable for all useless motzi shem rah that it displays. As such, on Sept. 11, 2025, I sent an email to rabbi Yosef Blau informing him – if he didn’t already know – that the web site is back online and shouldn’t be. One remark I made was: “At this point of time, now that JCW is no longer active and all the information is outdated, there cannot possibly be any toelles for it to be on display. There is no good that it can accomplish, only harm.”

I did not receive any direct response from Rabbi Blau. A few days later, I checked the site, and lo and behind, it was gone again. But, as I post this, I checked again and it's back. Go figure! 

Let’s get back to other Yetzer Hara trap, imamother.com. 

Apparently, it was launched in 2004 by a woman who calls herself Yael Cozocaru. Here is what she writes:

I, Yael, together with my husband, created Imamother in 2004 because I felt that there was a need for a website geared to frum Jewish women and mothers.

This website was born after I went searching in the vast expanses of the internet for some advice about raising our kids. I looked at the Jewish forums of numerous parenting websites, but there just wasn't anything relevant to me, as a frum woman. Again I left my computer feeling like there was just a blank area where there should have been a place where I could share my thoughts and worries. I was looking for a place where I could meet more women just like me. I wanted a spot where my friends and I could go to share stories about our day.

So far, so good. Let’s continue:

I wanted a website just like all the others but with a very important difference. I wanted it to be relevant to me as a married woman and as a frum mother. I wanted a place where there would be information about topics that are important to me, and where I could get advice from other frum women about whatever issue was bothering me at the moment.

Notice the phrase “like all the others”? What does it have that “all the others” have?

That’s right. All of them are gossip mills.

I wanted to check how consistent their MRB issues are. Have they improved at all since 2008? So, I tried an experiment. I scrolled through the Reading Room forum to see if there is a more recent case of women discussing the activities of people who cannot participate in the discussions. I came across a totally useless discussion dating to March of 2025. 

Apparently, two Jewish humorists, both male, one named Mendy and one named Jake, were kibbitzing with each other about writing styles. All this was printed in Ami Magazine. It looks like some kind of Purim satire, though it may have come across somewhat flat. 

Well, an imamother.com poster felt it was necessary to open a thread about this nonsensical exchange and criticize it for no good reason. She did not represent it as a Purim satire although other posters did make a point of it. Bottom line, the thread, which serves no earthly (or heavenly) purpose whatsoever, didn’t say a word of praise to Mendy or Jake, not to mention Ami or Mishpacha magazine, nor was it intended to. And, it is self evident that so much of the nasty criticisms are based on assumptions and misconceptions.

Now, this appears in their Reading Room forum where anybody can see it to this day. But doesn’t one have to already be in the site to access it?

So, I googled up Mendy P. No appearance of this Imamother post in numerous index pages. Then I googled Jake T. Same thing. Then I googled Mendy P. and Jake T. in a single lookup. 

Bingo! It was right there as the second index item. When I googled Mendy P. and Ami Magazine together, I got it toward the bottom of page 1.

This tells me that any imamother.com post, or at least those in the open forums, may be found in Google searches, just like I found mine in 2008. And it means that one doesn’t need to be on the site, a member of the site, or even looking for it specifically to come across it. Anybody who looks for a given combination of keywords can stumble across these chatroom threads, learn things that he doesn’t need to know, and get impressions about people and establishments which may not be constructive or even true or accurate.

What happens in Vegas, doesn’t always stay in Vegas.

Were any of the parties involved ever notified of this distasteful discussion on imamother.com? And, if they were, or came across it themselves, were they in any position to get on the site and straighten out the misconceptions?

Makkah Re’eihu B’Seter at the advanced level.

So, I spent the past two posts calling out two Orthodox Jewish chat rooms, one of which can be considered Chareidi and, as is my policy, I did indeed notify both venues to check out my posts. Is there any progress report?

Neither Yeshiva World News nor Imamother.com contacted me directly to “clear the air”. Neither one had the decency to say, “Dear Mr. Hirshman, although we think you are over the top and should get a life or find better things to write about, we apologize for the distress that you claim we caused you so long ago. If there is anything we can do to sooth your ego, do not hesitate to let us know…”

There were no changes that I could notice, hence, to me it looks like they are not very interested in cleaning up their act. 

It does indeed look like Mrs. Cozocaru looked up my wife’s account and disabled it. Although I probably would have done the same thing if I were her, still and all, my wife is a legitimate full-fledged card-carrying Orthodox Jewish mother, so I can't say it was proper.

Well, perhaps she got me off her back, but she didn’t fix anything. All I see is a lack of accountability, which is a standard female trait that goes all the way back to the first Chava. Incidentally, I’m sure there are probably plenty of other male “trolls” and lurkers with much more nefarious motives. 

So now, what steps should imamother.com take to eliminate MRB?

There is no easy answer. Here are some options:

Full Termination

The Mishna in Bava Kamma (4:9) discusses the degree of responsibility an owner has for his rowdy ox after it has been certified as a “repeat offender”. There is a dispute regarding when the owner took reasonable precautions to contain the ox but it damaged anyhow. Rabi Yehuda maintains that any reasonable precautions exempts the owner from full liability (he still has half liability). Rabi Eliezer is more stringent. He says that once an ox is certified as a rowdy ox, no amount of precautions are sufficient. 

אין לו שמירה אלא סכין – there is no way to safeguard this ox except to terminate it at the slaughterhouse.

Even though for oxen we rule like Rabi Yehuda, when it comes to chat groups, there truly is no safeguard except termination. This would be the best remedy, but I suppose it is too much to expect.

Here are some other measures that they can and should implement.

More Vigilant Moderation

This sounds simple enough but is easier said than done. This is self evident since, until now, the moderation is sloppy and porous. Clearly, the moderators do not recognize MRB when they see it and there is no reason to assume that they will get any better at it. So, this isn't really going to work.

Fix their “Contact Us” feature

 

There is absolutely no excuse for anybody with a valid complaint, member or not, to be unable to contact the site and voice themselves. Yet, on this site, the Contact Us feature is anything but user friendly.

The Contact Us feature of most web sites consists either of an embedded form for correspondence and/or a list of options for direct contact be it phone numbers, email addresses, WhatsApp and/or X or Facebook or Instagram nodes. On this site, there is no embedded form. When I click the Contact Us option, it does nothing but call up the user’s Outlook system. This is useful as long as the user actually uses Outlook and has it configured on their computer. For users who have Outlook but don’t use it, the system gets stalled.

I tried the feature on a smartphone which does not have any Microsoft programs and it did open an email to admin@imamother.com. Still, on a Microsoft computer it can easily get blocked and this needs to be fixed. An embedded form would help.

Take the Whole Site Underground

This means making the entire site accessible only to members, even the lighter, domestic forums. This will do absolutely nothing to prevent any LH or MRB and may even make it worse. The only thing it will accomplish is prevent interested parties who are not members from finding it. This is good if the outside person is uninvolved and won’t learn things [s]he doesn’t have to know. Yet, at the same time it will conceal the material from those who may be affected by it – as in my case – and this will turn “innocent” chit chat into MRB. 

I do not recommend this measure.

Open the Site Membership to All

At the other end of the spectrum, they could make the basic forums (site membership) accessible to anybody and only restrict the sensitive forums to women. Although this may lesson the cases of MRB on the basic forums, it won’t do anything for the exclusive female ones. Also. It obviously opens up a new can of worms of other problems, not the least of which is increased communication between men and women along with just plain bitul zman and moshav leitzim. On the other hand, we already have these issues on any other type of social media, Jewish or not, including the Yeshiva World News Coffee Room. There is no gender segregation there, either.

Create a “Male Guest” Feature

Another option is that, even without membership, the site can enable non-members to post as a “guest”, probably subject to prior approval or something, so that they could respond to anything that is posted that affects them.

As much as any of the above features may help the problem, I don’t foresee any of it happening. This is for two reasons:

(1) Such actions can only come on the heels of accountability. From all my input I see absolutely no signs of accountability whatsoever. Mrs. Corozaco was quick to disable my wife’s account, but, as I wrote above, she did not respond at all to my previous posts (which were sent to her directly). It does not look like she is interested in fixing the problem. The same goes for Yeshiva World News.

(2) Nobody takes me seriously in any case.

It comes out that these sites are dangerous places. They are hefker like the Wild West. Although they can do a lot of positive things, it all comes bundled with a lot of negativity and damage. That’s how the Yetzer Hara works. As such, I have to side with Rabi Eliezer on this one. אין לו שמירה אלא סכין. The best thing is to just close the entire site.

The above applies to the site owners and builders. It goes without saying that all Jewish Internet users should avoid these sites like the plague. After all the pasuk says (Mishlei 22:5):

צנים פחים בדרך עקש, שומר נפשו ירחק מהם.

And the Midrash Yechezkel says:

אל תקרי צנים אלא צ'טים - צ'טים פחים בדרך עקש, שומר נפשו ירחק מהם

Which means:

Chatrooms are traps in a crooked path. All who wish to guard their souls should avoid them.

May every reader [who made it this far] have a G’mar Chasima Tova!