Sinas Chinam VIII(b) – Innocence Found

 

As we left off in our previous post, we were hearing a fascinating story from the mouth of Zvi Gluck. This was right after he claimed that Rav Elyashiv, ZTL, said "in my presence" (i.e., he was talking to somebody else, not to Zvi) that one should let the police decide if “the person” is lying. Here is the entire story (1:28:11):

 

Now I'm going to share a story if I may, just to prove that point. Many, many years ago, not so many because Amudim was open already, a person who I knew growing up came to me and said, "I need your help. I was falsely accused of molesting somebody." I looked at him. I said, "You need my help. I'm the wrong guy for this." And he says, "No, you're the right guy for this because I firmly believe you look for the truth and not for an agenda."

He says, "I was accused of molesting somebody. I was an employee at a school. The school fired me. My wife doesn't believe me. She left me. I can't get another job. My whole life fell apart. I need you to help prove my innocence." And I remember telling him, "I don't know if I can prove your innocence, but if I find out you're guilty, I'm going to be the one to bury you." And I remember saying it like it was yesterday. And he said, "Game on. Anything you could do."

Make a long story short, this person was a bus driver. The accusation came from a parent on the bus that he molested a child on the bus. I reached out to the school and the school said to me, "What do you mean? You should be so happy we fired him as soon as we heard it." I said, "Firing someone and putting them on a leave of absence till it can be investigated is two different things.”

“Did you go to the police?" No, of course not. “Why not? Well, so how do you know that anything's even true?” Well, we believe the parent. I said, “You know what? I gave my word. Either I'll have to go after this guy or not, but can you, uh, can I speak to the parent that spoke to you?” Of course.

The parent gets in touch with me and tells me, "Oh, wow. It's so nice. You're finally taking it seriously. Someone's taking this seriously." My daughter came home and told me that she saw the bus driver molest another kid on the bus. “Did you call that other parent?” Yeah. “And what did they say?” They said, "I'm crazy and it's not true." Okay. I asked the school, "Can you share with me who the other parent is or have the other parent talk to me?" And the other parent got in touch with me and said, "Listen, we took my daughter to a therapist. We wanted to just be safe, but it came out that nothing was true and we don't know what this other mother was. And we told the school that they need to stop it.”

So, I asked the school, I said, "Is it?" And I don't know. I promise you, I'm not a detective. I'm not an investigator until today. I have no idea why this thought came into my head. But I asked the school specifically in this case, can the bus driver take the bus at night with me and drive the route that he did with these students? I could try to figure out what happened.

I will say to the credit of the school, they never told the bus driver who made the accusations. By the way, bus driver gets on the bus with me. It was a small bus, a mini bus. So, the driver's door, the driver would get in from that door and the students would get in from the other side. My mazal, it was pouring that night and the bus driver starts driving and I'm looking at the route and I see the names and I see in one place he drives on the wrong side of the street. Like, just interesting things happening, and at one point, by a dead end, he cuts the curb and opens up the driver's door.

I said “What's going on here?” He says, “Oh, when it's raining, this family, it's a single mother. She has a bunch of kids in the house. The father, the husband passed away and I basically passed the child to the mother through my door so she shouldn't have to come around the bus.” It was the next stop of the child who complained to her mother ‘cuz I don't get a ride on the bus driver's lap like my friend Chani.

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. But this school was so proud of themselves. We fired him right away. You should be happy. No, you destroyed a family. You destroyed a person's life for no reason. So, to answer that question, what if the person's lying? That's for the police to decide. And I stick to that all the time.

Zvi Gluck claims that the purpose of telling this story is to prove a point about letting the police decide whether a “person” (which person???) is lying. He closes the story by saying “So, to answer that question, ‘what if the person's lying?’ That's for the police to decide. And I stick to that all the time.”

I’m sorry to hear that. I think his closing statement is wrong. Moreover, I don’t see how this story even proves his point. We’ll get to this later. But this story does indeed prove other points.

Firstly, it proves that false accusations happen. Most Child Abuse Advocates do not believe that they do. It tells us, contrary to Zvi Gluck’s entire misguided philosophy, that there is such a thing as an “alleged” abuser. Secondly, it shows that false accusations are totally devastating. And that well-meaning people tend to jump to conclusions. It also tells us that the accusers may not actually be “lying” or may not think that they are lying, yet the accusations can still be false.

His remark that “firing someone and putting them on a leave of absence until it can be investigated are two different things” is also very revealing, although he doesn’t see it. What he is saying is that we need to distinguish between what needs to be done to protect potential victims, which is essential, and what “needs” to be done to punish suspected offenders, which is not. I have been preaching this for years (HERE) but nobody cares. Here comes Zvi Gluck and blurts it out as if it means something to him. But this is not what he preaches and certainly not what he practices. 

Zvi conceded that he was trying to "make a long story short". Sometimes this is a service to the listener and sometimes a disservice. For me, it was the latter. There are several gaps in the story due to details he left out.

As I mentioned, I have had personal experience with these types of stories, so I needed to know some of the missing pieces. I also wanted to challenge some of his assertions, especially his unwavering faith in the police. As such, I emailed Zvi Gluck with a list of questions.  The email is dated April 20, 2026 and the subject line was Please End this Sinas Chinam.

Here is the email in its entirety (note - in case this embedded file does not display in the blog email versions, the email can be accessed HERE):

As you can see, I asked 15 questions. I think the questions and their intent are self-explanatory. They were all honest and sincere questions and I really wanted to know the answers. I still do. They are not “shtuch” questions.

15 questions may be a bit heavy and I said as much, so I listed the 5 questions that I thought were the most important.

Zvi Gluck never responded to me. He did not answer the 15 questions and not even the 5 preferred questions. He did not answer a single question. What’s more reprehensible is that he did not even acknowledge the email at all. Not even to politely blow me off and say, “Dear Mr. Hirshman, Thank you for writing. I appreciate your thoughtful questions. Unfortunately, I am very busy and cannot address your email at this time. Have a nice life.” Or anything remotely close to that.

I think he is afraid to answer the questions. Very sadly, he is not the courageous hero I thought he was.

This email was the first of a series of 5 emails that I sent to him pleading to tone down the sinas chinam that he is perpetuating in public. There are four more to come. (Spoiler alert - None of them were answered or even acknowledged.)

For now, all I can say are to repeat the immortal words of HRHG RavAsher Weiss, Shlita:

I came to the conclusion you can't even have a dialogue with these people. They are so bent on what they believe.

 

Sinas Chinam VIII(a) – Innocence Lost

 

Also see this previous post:  Sinas Chinam III - Surviving Malka Leifer

I generally prefer to not expose correspondence that happens behind the scenes, but this is much too important. It’s Kalman again. Kalman sent me another email. He writes:

In all seriousness , I strongly suspect that you are a sexual abuser 

I took your posts and entered them in a psychological profile data bank and it came up that you are very disturbed individual and a probable abuser

I suggest you get help asap 

 

I am totally amazed at the extent that he echoes Reb Yid from my post in 2018. Reb Yid also had similar suspicions. I doubt Reb Yid entered my posts into a psychological profile data bank, but to be frank, I highly doubt that Kalman did it either. Where does one obtain a psychological profile data bank anyway?

The similarity between them is uncanny, to the extent that I wonder if they may even be the same person. I went so far as to ask Kalman if he was ever abused (like Reb Yid was) and he wouldn’t answer me. Let’s review what Reb Yid wrote in 2018.

I have very serious doubts and suspicions of what it is you are hiding from, avoiding and trying to cover up, Hashem Yeracheim. Perhaps the time has come to open an investigation into your past and history.

My response to him at the time:

Sorry to disappoint you. Go ahead if you like. Start with the autobiography in my book. Rated PG (for Holocaust stories and a few violent incidents in Eretz Yisrael).

This response works for Kalman, as well. Nothing much has changed in eight years.

That said, I can agree with Kalman’s data bank about one thing. This is the claim that I am: “[a] very disturbed individual”. There is truth to this but not the way he means. I responded to Kalman:

It is right about one thing, though. I am very disturbed about a lot of things. As I have written.

What am I disturbed about? Why am I so outraged about the players in this episode?

We can start with all the sinas chinam, zilzul Eretz Yisrael, mesira, nekama, and chillul Hashem. That ought to do it right there. But there is something else that I have complained about post after post after post. This is the blood lust, lynch-mob mentality, and universal automatic presumption of guilt that almost everyone on Earth seems to suffer from.

In one of my earliest posts, I wrote that this is because the Human being craves drama. It’s very easy to accuse people of doing nasty things, and a lot of fun to boot. And, since it happens so often, it must always be true. It’s so standard that even Reb Yid and Kalman can level “suspicions” at someone they have never met. This is because everyone seems to carry around their handy-dandy psychological profile data bank. It’s science, how can it be wrong?

Of course, these guys don’t know, or don’t care to know, where I am coming from. I mentioned it sparingly in a few of my posts, notably this one (HERE), but it hasn’t sunk in. So, I will say it again more directly.

I have never molested anybody and I have never been molested, but I have been where very few others claim to have been. And no one who hasn't been there can understand it. I have been in the thick of a case of false accusation. it doesn't happen all that often, but still, it happens way too often. 

B”H, I was not the one that was falsely accused, but it was somebody I have a very close connection to. It taught me how people who cannot think, think. It taught me how rumors fly and how the lynch-mob works. It taught me everything I need to know about how much to trust accusations in general.

The case in point happened over 35 years ago. But since then, I have seen a number of similar incidents. Once you pick up the pattern, it becomes easy to recognize.

There are two levels of false accusations – total and partial. A totally false accusation is exactly as it sounds. The “crime” never happened at all or it did not happen at the hands of the accused. The accused is totally innocent.

A partial false accusation means that a minor event is being overblown into a major event. The accused may not be totally innocent but is not as guilty as they are being made out to be. In all cases the accuser is trying to achieve a certain goal and they are aware that being truthful is not the way to get there. So, they resort to bending and stretching the facts. I see such patterns in the Malka Leifer case.

This plague is not only chronic, but it is also contagious. רבים חללים הפילה.The casualties are many. Among those I was distressed to find on the casualty list is Rav Zvi Gluck of Amudim.

I first heard him out on a Halacha Headlines podcast in 2016 – yes, those ten long years – and I was very impressed by his interview. I quoted him in 2016 and sang the praises of the organization. I did it again in this post in 2022. I wrote:

 

Amudim looks to be an upstanding and dedicated Jewish organization that specializes in crisis intervention and case management. From their website, it looks like they deal with all types of traumatic situations including domestic abuse, substance abuse, other addictions, depression, eating disorders, self-harm, mental health issues, and of course, sexual abuse…Clearly, their goal is to help individual people deal with their problems. They are not interested in “changing the world” and saving it from wicked people. They seem to understand that “wicked” people are created by the same G-d who created the righteous ones – for whatever reasons. We need to coexist with them.

I was trying to say that I did not see the vigilante lynch-mob mentality in Amudim. In his March 15 interview in The Struggle, Zvi Gluck said what I wanted to hear. He said (14:26):

I'm very much in the sense that my focus is more on the victims, helping them, getting them the proper help. Right? I'm very anti-abuse, don't get me wrong. I'll do whatever it takes to stop it, but our focus isn't the abuser. Our focus is the victim. Very often by dealing with the victim you're dealing with the abuser and you have to take a stand which I have no problem doing but that's not our focus.

I took this to mean that he is a “champion of victims”, to do what he can to help them. Okay, if he needs to deal with an abuser to “stop it”, it’s part of helping them. But I hoped that he hadn’t crossed the line to be a “crusader of justice” and an “avenging angel” after the fact, when it doesn’t help the [former] “victims”. I thought he was different than the herd.

Until last March.

This is when Zvi Gluck appeared on the two broadcasts and showed me that he is just as vulnerable to the groupthink as are most others. One was his appearance at the Beis Medrash Ohr HaChaim in Monsey on March 8, 2026. The second was his interview with Joe Farkas on his podcast The Struggle exactly a week later on March 15, 2026.

It disturbed me to discover that Zvi Gluck is one of “them”, one of the lynch mob. I always thought better of him. To his credit, he is more moderate and level-headed than some others, but he peddles the same misconceptions that I listed among the consumers in my Kalman the Konsumer post.

But it’s more than that. Zvi Gluck is a very popular, charismatic, sincere, and influential person. He truly does want to do the right thing and his heart is in the right place. Consequently, when someone like him catches the “let’s-destroy-all-the-perps” sinas chinam disease, he doesn’t just succumb to it, he also spreads it around.

Case in point, throughout both his talks, he uses two terms with complete finality - abusers and victims. In both talks, there is one word that never came out of his mouth: alleged.  Not once did he utter the word alleged. In his world, every abuser is a total confirmed abuser from start to finish. Every victim is a total confirmed victim from start to finish. In his world, there is no such thing as an alleged abuser and no such thing as an alleged victim.

This is how Zvi Gluck can so cynically pronounce (19:00): 

the number one tool used to silence victims is the Torah.

Sounds pretty damning, no?

But let’s revise it just a bit:

the number one tool used to silence alleged victims – or, those who claim to be victims - is the Torah.

Owing to the fact that this situation (non-confirmed accusations) is what is happening in most cases that Zvi Gluck is complaining about, it is not nearly as damning. The abuser may not really be an abuser and the victim may not really be a victim. Shouldn't we turn to the Torah for guidance?

Zvi Gluck doesn't think so. And here is something that I am convinced Zvi Gluck would never admit to. 

It’s a two-way street.

Let’s go back one minute earlier in his talk (18:04). Zvi Gluck said as follows:

But what made it even more complex, more difficult, and even worse in some ways is the communal failure. The collective communal failure, quoting the Torah, quoting Rabonim, misquoting Rabanim, misquoting Gamara in an effort to silence people.

I hate to say it, but the number one tool used by advocates such as Zvi Gluck to silence and to mahser accused people (alleged abusers), is also the Torah. Quoting the Torah and misquoting the Gemara and misapplying the concepts such as Lo Taamod, Rodef, and Pikuach Nefesh. Quoting and misquoting and misrepresenting Rabbanim such as Rav Elyashiv (1:27:50) and the Tzitz Eliezer (24:12).

As Zvi said on March 15 (41:25): It's okay for the goose. It's okay for the gander. 

All told, from his own words, there is every indication that he has sold out to the lynch-mob. But, wait!

Toward the end of his talk in Monsey, Zvi tells us a heart-wrenching story which effectively negates everything he was preaching until then. And he doesn’t even realize that he is doing it. Strangely enough, he tells it for all the wrong reasons. He says he is telling the story “to prove a point”. In my opinion, (1) it does not prove his point and (2) it proves several points he was not trying to make. In some ways it redeems him from his misguidedness, but in some ways it doesn’t.

On the side, I was indeed very impressed with how he dealt with the situation and see him as a hero in this particular story. This doesn't make him any less misguided.

I was spellbound by the story because it is so similar to the event that happened over 35 years ago, mentioned above, that “taught me everything I need to know about how much to trust accusations”.

Here is the story (1:28:11):

Now I'm going to share a story, if I may, just to prove that point. Many many years ago, not so many because Amudim was open already, a person who I knew growing up came to me and said, "I need your help. I was falsely accused of molesting somebody."

A false accusation? Really? Is such a thing possible?

Well, there’s a lot more to this story and a lot to unpack from it. I can’t do it in this post. The rest of the story and what it says to us will have to wait for the next post. Stay tuned for it. All I will say now is that we should all be disturbed.

Very disturbed.

To be continued…

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 oppose 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-grandchildren 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?

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.