NEW YORK
The Jewish Week
Joshua Hammerman
Special To The Jewish Week
There has been considerable consternation and media coverage of late about how child sex abuse cases are handled in the haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, community. The Brooklyn district attorney, no doubt feeling the pressure, is now pushing for legislation that would require rabbis to report such crimes to the authorities. This scandal has been discussed for years in The Jewish Week and other Jewish media, and recently in The New York Times, with reports of how informants are routinely shunned and victims banned from reporting abuse to the authorities. Anti-Semitic websites have had a field day, comparing this Jewish “code of silence” to the Mafia’s.
The coverage has pinpointed an obscure rabbinic prohibition as a major source of the problem: the ancient prohibition against mesirah, the handing over of a Jew to non-Jewish authorities. Ironically, the same Hebrew root forms the word “masoret,” or tradition, describing a priceless heritage handed over from one generation to another. But in this case, mesirah, the public disclosure of allegations against another Jew, is considered to be an act that desecrates God’s name.
It is important to emphasize that most rabbinic authorities concur that Judaism has no place for the protection of sexual predators. Even for those who might otherwise support mesirah, the prohibition does not apply when there is a perceived public menace. As Rabbi Moses Isserles states in his gloss to the Shulchan Aruch, “A person who attacks others should be punished. If the Jewish authorities do not have the power to punish him, he must be punished by the civil authorities.”
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.