Any longtime readers who are still with me know that I started my extensive Mesira series in 2015 as a response to the flawed Kol Koreh that was published in some Jewish periodicals. This eventually morphed into extended coverage of the Malka Leifer affair.
I capped off the Kol Koreh analysis by presenting a four-part series that I called The Four Horsemen of the Kol Koreh Apocalypse. The concept was obviously modeled from X-tian [my]theology, sorry about that, but I thought that this helped bring out the point.
The “Four Horsemen” of the Kol Koreh are four common scenarios of this kind of abuse wherein most rational people will agree that going straight to law enforcement without taking some more moderate steps at first is not a good idea.
The first two Horsemen (cases 1 and 2) were fictional scenarios. In each of these two cases, the fiction portrayed an actual identifiable abuser who presented a clear and present danger. Case 1 was the case of the Amudim video clip Shattered where the abuse is happening inside a nuclear family. Both the abuser and victim are members of the nuclear family and going straight to the police would be the surest way to destroy it.
Case 2 was a reporter posing as a young woman who claimed to be abused by her friend’s father while she was visiting. 27 Israeli Rabbanim were asked what to do by the bogus victim. 21 out of the 27 Rabbonim advised her not to go to the police since doing so will very likely be more detrimental to her than otherwise. She has a lot more to lose than she has to gain in her case.
The second two Horsemen (cases 3 and 4) were cases of abuse that allegedly really happened. However, both cases involved incidents that were far in the past and it could not even be ascertained that the offenders were still offenders. Case 3 was the Malka Leifer episode where three vengeful sisters walked into a police station in Australia to file a complaint going back 3 to 7 years against a person who left Australia years before and had no intention of coming back.
Case 4 seems to be a true story of a young man who had a phase of being abusive as a young adult but grew out of it, married, and was currently minding his own business. Once again, a vengeful person who claimed to have been a victim of this fellow during his dark period took it upon himself to get this fellow into trouble with the law for no reason other than personal vengeance.
I want to note that I have never received any counter-arguments to my position on the Four Horsemen from anybody as of writing it. Not from any readers, not from David J. Nyer who authored and published the Kol Koreh, not from any of the 200 185 183 181 Rabbonim who signed that thing, and not from Zvi Gluck. Nobody.
To be sure, there are many people who disagree with me on the Malka Leifer episode and think that these three sisters are the world’s biggest heroes, including Zvi Gluck, but nobody who claims to adhere to Shulchan Aruch and Halacha has even tried to explain why (including Zvi Gluck).
So, these are the Four Horsemen that I illustrated until now to discredit the Kol Koreh. Now, thanks to Zvi Gluck and his inspiring lecture on March 8, we now have a fifth Horseman. I am referring to the case of the false accusation that he related which I discussed in my previous Sinas Chinam post.
The first two horsemen are fictitious scenarios of clear-cut abuse and an active abuser. The problem was that going straight to law enforcement would likely come at a price that nobody wants to pay. The second two horsemen are true scenarios about allegedly clear-cut abuse but are ancient history. This fifth horseman is a true scenario where no clear-cut abuse took place at all.
To me it’s a no brainer that going “straight” to the police (or going at all) is a recipe for disaster. But Zvi Gluck’s brain works differently. This is because he drank the Kol Koreh Kool-Aid. Also, he is probably right-handed. In any case, fear not, because he has Rav Elyashiv, ZTL, to rely on.
But so do I.
The difference is exactly as I wrote in this Kol Koreh post (HERE):
if we don’t get a precise transcript of Rav Elyashiv’s exact words, we cannot be sure Rav Horowitz (in our case, Zvi Gluck) is quoting him accurately. I don’t know exactly what Rav Elyashiv said but I know what he wrote. He did not write to go straight to the police.
Here is what Rav Elyashiv wrote to Rav Shraga Feivel Cohen:
Indeed, all this about permitting one to notify the government is only in a case where the matter is clear that his (the suspect’s) hand is indeed sullied.
And HERE he wrote:
And therefore, each and every case requires the evaluations and rulings of Torah scholars who are great in Torah and fear of Heaven.
In the case that was discussed “in Zvi Gluck’s presence”, we have no idea what are the circumstances of the case, what was permitted, exactly who is expected to contact the police, and who is the one who might be lying. But each case needs to be evaluated individually. In the false accusation case that is described by Zvi Gluck in his talk, if it was presented to Rav Elyashiv the way Zvi described it to us, it is hard to imagine that Rav Elyashiv would recommend contacting the police.
In the same way that Reb Zvi falsifies the position of Rav Elyashiv, ZTL, he likewise falsifies the position of the Tzitz Eliezer, ZTL. He falsely presents both of them as advocating to report cases to the police as a standard course of action. Neither of them say so. They say only that it is permissible when it is necessary.
At about the 24:10 mark of his appearance he falsely claims that "The Tzitz Eliezer writes explicitly that in the case of child abuse, one is obligated to go to the authorities, not muttar."
Throughout the entire teshuva, the Tzitz Eliezer constantly uses the term muttar, not obligated, except in one place where he writes “one is obligated to save a young girl from physical and mental harm.” He didn’t say one is obligated to go to the authorities, he said one is obligated to save a person. This is not much of a chiddush. If going to authorities is the best way to do that, then you can claim it is an obligation, but where it is not, such as in all five of the “Horseman” cases that I describe, not only is there no obligation, but mark my word, it is forbidden.
The Kol Koreh faction and Zvi Gluck glance at teshuvos but do not actually read them. Consequently, they misquote them, misrepresent them, and distort them to fit their agenda. And their agenda is to mahsser every accused abuser to the police regardless of what grounds they have to do so or the potential consequences. Everything will turn out just hunky-dory. As such, to conclude his rendition about the false accusation episode, Reb Zvi remarked:
I can promise you if this case went to the police, there would have been no arrest. It would have been investigated properly and this guy's life wouldn't have been destroyed. There is a system that works. If we utilize the system, it will be beneficial to everybody.
I am not sure what he means by 'arrest'. He probably means being fully booked and detained, not just brought in and interrogated. Despite his “statistics” (less than 15% get arrested), I don’t know how he can be so confident.
The job of the police is to catch and prosecute bad guys. It is not to judge cases. They need to validate their paychecks so they really like to come up with bad guys, even if they aren’t really so bad. Especially if business is slow. You can call it “erring on the side of caution”. They will hold innocent people indefinitely. They do not work out of conscience. רק אין יראת אלקים במקום הזה.
Zvi has a point in this specific case, being that it is especially weak. This is because the complaint is not coming from the alleged victim or a credible eye-witness and there is really no victim who is ready to press charges. So, the person would likely be released after questioning. But this in no way would make him look innocent. There is no reason to think that going this route will make the school less inclined to implement the extreme measures it implemented anyway or make his irrational wife any more rational.
To me, based on my personal layman experience and not as a seasoned Child Abuse Advocate, all this seems quite obvious. A seasoned professional like Reb Zvi Gluck should have just as much common sense, but he isn’t showing it. Since until this point I had held Reb Zvi Gluck such high regard, I considered that maybe there is something that I am missing. Hence, I contacted Zvi Gluck directly and implored him to fill in the blanks and set me straight.
I wrote and sent him the email that I embedded in my previous Sinas Chinam post, the first of five. It turned out that the embedded email did not display in my blog emails, so in this post, I will need to copy/paste the important parts of it. If you wish to see the entire email, you can see it embedded in the previous post on the blog site or you can access it HERE.
To open, I introduced myself and proceeded to tell him why I am writing to him. I wrote:
I have been following, researching and analyzing the Malka Leifer episode since 2016. That’s ten years, now. I have written a ton of literature about it. I studied the claims and the facts and the Halachic and social ramifications. Unlike you, I know what the Tzitz Eliezer really says and what he doesn’t. Also, what Rav Elyashiv, Rav Dovid Cohen the Chofetz Chaim and some others actually wrote.
Astonishingly, it brings us to a very different place than you are at with this. Clearly, one of us has a distorted perception of this case, either you or me...Perhaps you can teach me things that I don’t know. Or, just maybe, I can teach you things that you don’t know.
I proceeded to ask him the 15 questions that I referred to in my previous post. The ones that inquire about the role of the police were questions 6-12. These were the exact questions:
6. Do you honestly believe that reporting this to the police would have brought about a better outcome? Why?
7. Do you think any police investigator would have gone along with the accused to check out his route?
8. Are you aware that the job of police is to decide whether or not to detain the suspect, which depends on whether they can establish that a crime was committed, not whether the suspect is innocent or guilty? The police do not exonerate anybody.
9. Are you aware that the police will be forced to question the affected child? Is that a good idea? For a mere allegation?
10. Even if ultimately the charges are dropped, as you are convinced they would have been, why wouldn’t the same amount of damage or more happen in the interim regardless?
11. Why do you think that the police would be trusted by the school and community if they dropped the case [invariably due to lack of proof or a complainant]?
12. Why do you think it is muttar for an external party to call police without first confronting the accused as mandated by the Chofetz Chaim, Rav Moshe Feinstein and the Rambam? (Note I am differentiating a first-hand complaint by the victim to that of an external party based on second hand information as in this case.)
Collectively, the seven questions address the concerns about police motives that I wrote about earlier. They should be self-explanatory. Without answering all of the above questions, I cannot see how this story even begins to “prove his point” that we can rely on the police for a positive outcome.
All told, I was truly hoping at least one of us could get educated. As I wrote him, “Perhaps you can teach me things that I don’t know. Or, just maybe, I can teach you things that you don’t know.” But accomplishing this requires an open line of communication. From my end, the line was open and remains so. From his end there is only deafening silence.
Once again, the fateful words of HRHG Asher Zelig Weiss return to haunt us.
One cannot have a dialog with these people, they are so bent on what they believe.
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