Retaliation: Australia Chabad Bars Child Sexual Abuse Victim's Father from Receiving Torah Honors

Failed Messiah
June 8, 2012

http://failedmessiah.typepad.com/failed_messiahcom/2012/06/australia-chabad-bars-victims-father-from-receiving-torah-honors-567.html

Screen shot 2012-06-07 at 10.30.56 PMRabbi Zvi Telsner, the son-in-law of the late head of Chabad in Australia, Rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Groner, has banned the father of a child sexual abuse victim (who was abused by a Chabad employee) from being called up to the Torah. Telsner refuses to tell the victim's father why he banned him. Groner allegedly covered up child sexual abuse and rape for decades and enabled at least two pedophiles.

Rabbi Zvi Telsner

Zephania Waks, the father of Manny Waks – the most outspoken of the more than one dozen alleged victims of David Cyprys, David Kramer and other pedophiles who operated with impunity at Chabad's flagship Australian yeshiva, Yeshiva College in Melbourne – has been barred from receiving aliyot, Torah honors, by Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Telsner, the leading Chabad rabbi in Australia and the son-on-law of the late head of Chabad in Australia, Rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Groner.

Telsner refused to tell Waks why he has been banned – a move apparently meant to protect himself and Chabad from prosecution for possible witness tampering and intimidation (these are not the exact legal terms used in Australia, but you get the point) and from civil suits.

I asked Manny Waks tonight about Telsner's treatment of his father:

"Rabbi Telsner's actions are simply outrageous. He has essentially executed precisely what he said [during a recent Sabbath sermon] would happen to anyone who speaks out on this issue - excommunication. The ongoing persecution of me and my family by the Yeshivah leadership and their blind followers over the past year or so has been relentless. This has now reached a whole new level. Rabbi Telsner's actions ought to be condemned by everyone, especially by members of the Yeshivah community."

Telsner is the rabbi of the Yeshiva Centre and is fuctioning as Groner's replacement.

Chabad's International Headquarters in Brooklyn – Rabbis Krinsky, Kotlarsky, and Shemtov – need to issue a clear and unambiguous statement condemning Telsner's action immediately.

If it does not, it is complicit with this behavior and should be held financially accountable by donors and morally accountable by the rest of us.

From Chabad.org, Chabad's official website: