NEW YORK
The Jewish Daily Forward
By Jon Kalish
Edited By Larry Cohler-Esses
Published December 28, 2012, issue of December 28, 2012.
You think your family has issues? Consider the Weberman clan.
Nechemya Weberman was convicted December 10 for child sexual abuse in a landmark case that underlined the massive support he enjoyed in the Satmar Hasidic community. But it turns out that he is just one high-profile member of a sprawling brood, whose diverse activities have made them one of that community’s more notable families.
Besides the newly minted felon, the extended Weberman family includes an anti-Zionist who broke bread with Holocaust deniers in Tehran six years ago; an immigration attorney who got the Satmar rebbe into America after World War II, and a Yippie “garbologist,” famous for sorting through the trash of Bob Dylan, among other things.
From the Satmars’ perspective, the singular bad apple in the barrel may be neither the anti-Zionist nor the convicted child abuser. It is the garbologist, Alan Jules Weberman, a secular left-wing activist better known as A.J. Weberman, who has recently put up a website to trash his Hasidic relatives and the entire Satmar community.
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