Big Aish Begs Nancy Not to Tell
Nancy’s Story: Part VII
[An Aish Rabbi] frantically called me after mentioning it to another rabbi at Aish who apparently impressed upon him a “state of emergency” should I go to the press. [An Aish Rabbi] stated that he was not aware, even himself, of the great impact this action would have. It was obvious that [Aish Rabbi] believed every word he was told. Prior to speaking to another rabbi at Aish, he was quite calm.
This is why I am sure it was not his idea. He was scared!
He scared me saying that I wa in “grave spiritual danger” and that I will be responsible for destroying the faith of many secular people who would otherwise come to believe in the Torah. He said
the Jerusalem Post has done much damage to Judaism.
Update: Nancy adds,
DK….this was not about the injury…..it was about the Rabbi Eisenstein’s sham Beit Din which he conducts from home after being kicked off the “real” Beit Din of Jerusalem….. and about Rabbi Eisenstein having me kicked out of seminary…..which is much worse to me than the injury. I loved my school and Rabbi Eisenstein had me kicked out for being a Marrano Jew. I am more upset about injustices than physical injury.
The rabbi who urged my silence had my confidence and promised me in front of the entire class that he would personally see to it that this matter was resolved and I would be re-instated in my seminary. He never kept his word….he only scared me into keeping silent about Rabbi Eisenstein and that program he is affiliated with, Ohel Sarah Imenu. “Rabbi Eisenstein operates like a mafia”, I told the Aish rabbi. This Aish teacher told me not to use words such as, “corruption” and “mafia”. He told me I looked “emotional”. I felt that was a very manipulative statement geared to make me feel “silly” or “childish”. I lost respect. I became “wayward”.
This does not reflect on all of the teachers at Aish. Most have been very fair and kind to me
I personally have no problems with Aish for they took care of business when I needed them and taught me a lot. They took me from step one and gave me some direction. I am grateful for that. Rabbi Coopersmith and others were ones who did the right thing for me when I reported sexual harassment.
This situation which is on the board now was mostly about corruption. The teacher involved was not “ordained” but is called “rabbi”. But, I am also disappointed that they instruct students to keep silent.
In regards to the violence, when it first began to happen, the broken windows, etc., I called a different Aish rabbi from my neighborhood to help me. He did not believe that it could be Haraedim doing such things. He claimed there were burglars about.
However, this is not to say that he didn’t offer some tangible and helpful advice….
The rabbi in question in our current story knew all about the many violent attacks before
the 2 X 4 attack. The best advise he offered me was to go to a Kabballist. I had much admiration for him in the past but I saw clearly that they just wanted to keep me silent and blamed these incidents on some kind of “spiritual attack” stemming from my past.
48 comments
wow DK. at least someone appreciates your blog
? and who would that be?
and i know who this rabbi is… such a waste. the upper eschelon protecting those who shouldn’t be in a position of authority. and these are supposed to be rabbis, our teachers. we can only hope that the women and girls who have been hurt by these sorry excuses for men will find the courage to start speaking out. it won’t be easy…
“and i know who this rabbi is…”
Feel free to divulge. Nancy only said I couldn’t say what she told me. However, others may divulge his identity here if they know who it is.
B”H
AISH would never ever advise someone to go to a Kabbalist !!!!!
whichever rabbi thinks your blog has an impact
Miriam?
Why do you think they wouldn’t send somebody to a Kabbalist? I took one of their online courses a few months ago. There was a full lesson on (the very basics of) Kabbalah. Also, they cite the Kabbalah all the time in shiurim. These comments are getting ridiculous. Every skeptic thinks here that they are Columbo, picking up on a minute fraction in the story that will eventually collapse the whole thing.
I know there’s a lot of skepticism towards Kabbalah as it is perceived today, mostly because it’s nothing more than a branch of mysticism that was about to die out had it not experienced a revival with the hippie movement (which also brought about a mainstream Yiddish revival). Those Chasidic scholars I know that actually get into Kaballah claim it’s commonly understood that no female and nobody under forty years of age should pursue it and those individuals should accordingly be discouraged from it. I got myself an introductory book on Kabbalah a couple of years ago, and compared to other schools of thought at that time, Kabbalism basically reflects medieval (as in the mindset / philosophy, not necessarily chronology) superstition and phenomenology at best. Kabbalism more or less has always been a splinter phenomenon of hocospocus qualities, thus it was nothing broadstream educated European Jewish Orthodoxy pre-WW2 would refer to.
“it’s commonly understood that no female and nobody under forty years of age should pursue it and those individuals should accordingly be discouraged from it.”
That was true until the recent Kiruv push of the last few decades. Some Gadol somewhere overturned the ordinance (I’m not even sure how that works today according to established halachic process). Jews and now and even non-Jews (!?!?), of all ages and sexes are now permitted to learn what even the Baal Shem Tov had to study in secret in his day.
My take: if you want to having a meandering clue of what you’re studying you should be over 40 and extremely learned to approach Kabbalah study. The woman thing only need apply under social circumstance wherein women are categorically unlearned, which is increasingly not the case today.
B”H
Quoting Kabbalah in classes doesn’t mean that they are into it or want their students to know it. Studying Kabbalah takes ages and efforts but unfortunately, some Aish students, like you, think that they know everything after listening to a brief Shiur.
Aish would never send a non - Jew to a Kabbalist and would try to solve problems in a different way. But let’s say they did, they would send her to Rabbi Scheinberger. But I am not sure, if he would deal with the matter.
Miriam,
Aish student is a nice euphamism for Baal teshuva. You just exhibited the exact kind of elitism and distain that dk accuses people like you of. Incidentally nothing I offered was innacurate. And I am ffb. Thanks for playing though
B”H
Halfsours,
I have nothing against AISH, as it is a good place for BTs.
Fact is, that Nancy was thrown out of the course by Rabbi Nachum Eisenstein. A Rabbi I, by the way, respect very much.
A few years ago, I had to deal with him. Not because of conversion but Rabbi Eisenstein is involved in many other halachic issues.
I got to know him as a strict person who knows a lot about Halacha and fulfills his tasks with great responsibility and enthusiasm.
So, Nancy was kicked out by him and I don’t know if anyone here is aware of what kind of position he has at the Rabbanut. He is one of THE guys and whoever was kicked out by him, doesn’t have much of a choice anymore.
Instead of complaining on this site, Nancy should have used her common sense and look for a more helpful opportunity. Going to Bnei Brak, for instance. Even before Rabbi Eisenstein kicked her out, as now, everything seems to late.
Complaining on this site and accusing the whole Rabbanut and Misrad HaPnim of bribery doesn’t lead her anywhere.
rabbis are NOT G-d. they are infallible, which makes them subject to all kinds of sins, just like the rest of us. how unfortunate today that there’s so much corruption within the rabbinate. i make this statement because i have a friend who is sometimes employed by the rabbinate to go after delinquent ex-husbands of agunot. he, himself, didn’t even marry through the rabbinate. a rabbi performed the ceremony and he and his wife went to cyprus, got married there, and then registered here with misrad hapnim. a ketuba was signed and he would still be obligated to give her a get, but people know what the rabbinate here is like. if people still want to live in the clouds, so be it. but nancy has legitimate complaints and has tried many different avenues. i think that she has finally found the right people to help her. coming here and posting was a way for her to let the jewish community (orthodox, or otherwise) know that this garbage does go on in the chareidi world (where it’s usually swept under the carpet because of the fear of lashon hara, of course”. it’s all fine and dandy for u to say, “why didn’t she do this” or “why didn’t she do that”. u have ur heads in the sand. wake up to the reality that rabbis are molesting girls and women (not to mention young boys), and getting away with it because of the “fear of lashon hara”. sorry, that doesn’t cut it. when there’s an injustice, u speak out about it and u bring it out into the open. if rabbis fear that it will cause nonreligious jews to stay away from the religion, then they obviously have something to hide. how sad that they “hide behind halacha”. that’s not what halacha is for.
I’m as critical as it gets of ultra-Orthodoxy and its hypocrisies, but I will never ever support apparently bogus claims against anybody, whether I like that person or whatnot. If my head is in the sand for not enabling what not only is illegitimate but also illegal, so be it.
honey, do us all a favor and keep ur head in the sand. that’s where it belongs. so long as u refuse to accept the reality of what these disgusting men, who call themselves rabbis, do, so be it. ur either naive, blind, or just plain stupid. i would prefer to give u the benefit of the doubt, but u don’t leave anyone much of a choice. these guys can’t seem to keep their pants zipped and all u can do is call them bogus claims because no charges have been pressed against them. well duhhhhhh! these girls and women are told to keep their mouths shut in the name of “lashon hara”. u haven’t an ounce of seichel in ur little peabrain.
so, miriam, got a newsflash for ya babe…
the “righteous eisenstein”, whom u claim to know personally, was such a great guy that they kicked him out of the jerusalem rabbinate quite some time ago…..where’ve ya been, honey? out to lunch? perhaps dining with his honor, the honorable eisenstein? guess this would explain why he’s operating out of his own home, without the stamp of approval from the jerusalem rabbinate…
Hamsa, apparently your education has not only lacked scholarly but also social qualities as your manners are definitely way below what is considered acceptable in the secular world. Please spare us your low-class rants.
DK, since when has scum been permitted on here?
nice way to get around the above-mentioned statement. the lack of scholarly and social qualities? low-class rants? i do believe ur the pot calling the kettle black. u r an embarrassment to jewish women everywhere. crawl back under ur rock, and stay there.
B”H
I don’t think it is true that Rabbi Eisenstein was kicked out of anywhere. However, I will investigate or even better, ask the Rabbi himself.
Amen, Sarah. DK, I’m usually not in favor of censorship, but I’ve wiped plenty of things like hamsa off the soles of my shoes over the years. I wouldn’t mind if he disappeared.
Mo, the way I see it Hamsa has only just validated my point. There’s something to the sentiment that one may understand the character of a person by looking at those people that that person deliberately socializeswith.
apparently, u two can dish it out, but u can’t take it. so there are people who disagree with u and it sends u into a tizzy. the reason that u two don’t offend me is that i, and a few others, know nancy’s story to be true. and there are plenty of other girls and women out there who have suffered at the hands of men like the ones who have tried to make nancy suffer. u find her story to be unbelievable, well ur entitled to believe whatever u want to believe. she has witnesses to the attacks on her apartment. and u find it incredulous that all of sudden she finds out that she’s jewish and decides to come to israel to find out more about her heritage. she’s not the only one who’s had this happen to her. what u don’t seem to get is that she’s trying to find out more about judaism and all ur doing to her is attacking her because she has the audacity to bring abuse among the so-called hareidim out into the open. it happens among the helonim, but G-d forbid, it should be made public about the hareidim. u can believe whatever u want. ur entitled to ur beliefs. ur calling me scum, and saying such things as “I’ve wiped plenty of things like hamsa off the soles of my shoes over the years” doesn’t offend me. it only goes to show me that u lack any form of social grace, as well as the ability to understand a jew in need.
“I wouldn’t mind if he disappeared.” this is not something that u say about another jew. but i guess that doesn’t matter to u because it seems that u don’t care about other jews, no matter what their stories are…
baruch hashem, nancy is now being helped by good people. and she’s been before a real bet din. what u fail to understand is that marranos are jews. she was raised in a completely non-jewish environment and is trying to “fix” the wrong that was done to her family by the spanish inquisition. it is unfortunate that she is being mauled by people, such as urselves, who have had the opportunity (and privilege) to be raised as jews. it is NOT nancy’s fault that she didn’t have that opportunity, yet u choose to criticize her because of her background and the path that she’s taken to reach the point where she is now.
“There’s something to the sentiment that one may understand the character of a person by looking at those people that that person deliberately socializes with”. point well made.
You all are engaged in nothing more than EGO BATTLES. This is not fact-finding! Your rude comments to each other do not help
anyone. They are only rage and they are disgraceful. They show the truth of the very abuse that I have spoken about.
so much for free speech…
The freedom ofspeech is not the freedom of insult or even the freedom of libel. Even the decalogue marks it. So much for observant.
practice what u preach. i am not the one who called someone scum. i never thought u were observant.
Hamsa
In case you haven’t figured it out, freedom of speech on the internet means you’re free to post whatever you want on your own site. You’re also free to be an asshole on someone elses site, and he’s free to ban you. Troll.
hamsa, you are not helping your cause. You are escalating the pitch, and exchanging insults with a reader (Sarah/froylein) who usually does not get involved in insult exchanges. Please stop immediately, or I will choose to put you into moderation.
nancy doesn’t have to prove anything to any of u. it is unfortunate that the rabbi who took nancy’s money for the shiurim also turned out to be an ostrich with his head in the sand. her documents have been notarized and they are legitimate, whether they are in latin or spanish, is irrelevant. they were given to her at her request and she went to the source.
we all make choices, dk. nancy chose to come to ur forum to tell her story and she’s only received negativity in return. whereas i have not ever referred to anyone here as scum, asshole, or troll (as ur arrogant sarah and boy mohammed, have), i have tried to impress upon u the validity of nancy’s story. just because many outlandish things have happened to her, doesn’t make her story any less valid. i know the aish rabbi to whom she’s referring because i was also there, at his shiurim. i have seen her notarized documents and went with her to see another rabbi (spanish-speaking, and as well, wanted over a thousand dollars from her just to accompany her to the bet din). i saw the looks that the haredi men (and women) gave her when they would see her outside, feeding the cats. i saw the brutal marks left on her after the last attack.
your little clique here sees fit to agree with anyone who is of their own ilk, and G-d forbid if anyone should disagree with them. i couldn’t care less what ur reader usually does or doesn’t do. that’s not my business. she is an arrogant little girl who needs to grow up and open her eyes, as well as her mind. it’s time to join the real world, where things like this happen to people.
i’m here to support nancy. it doesn’t seem like anyone else here is willing to do that. they’re too busy trying to punch holes in every word she says.
My apologies, DK. I can hardly be blamed if a person refers a statement in the third person singular to themself, can I?
Hamsa, it does matter whether the documents are in Latin or in Spanish as the latter makes it evident that they are forgeries to anyone who has the slightest insight into the procedures at the Curia. You obviously don’t, so don’t raise your ignorance of such matters to the level of a standard gauge of understanding.
I can’t be bothered right now to quote all the slurs and condescending remarks you’ve tried to spew at me above, only just because I’d made critical annotations. I’ll grant you that that was probably the best you could do seeing your level of dialectic skills. My point of criticism has not been that strange things may not happen to people but that the story contains gross interferences with logic as well as the given circumstances regarding history and law.
As for your claim of me being a little girl, I dare say it wouldn’t make any differences at all whether I were nine or ninety years old if I chose to point out apparent flaws in the story which deprive it of any credibility whatsoever, regardless of Nancy actually having partly Jewish ancestry or whatnot. But if you really bother to know, in my real world I’m a university-educated college teacher who mostly works with students from particularly tough backgrounds, which include substance abuse issues as well as domestic and childhood abuse. I’ve been trained to not only see but also act up to the symptoms of either form of abuse, that’s why, based on my professional experience paired with my knowledge of Vatican procedures, the conditions under which one may acquire a US military ID and of everyone being born in the USA automatically being a US citizen as well as my experience with various Charedi communities, I choose not to believe this shtick.
my BA is in english literature and composition from a private university in the united states. perhaps u didn’t read what i wrote - arrogant little girl. it is u who have been condescending toward nancy. u can be as condescending toward me as u wish. i don’t care. u can have a master’s from harvard, but it doesn’t mean that ur well-educated in life. the credibility is in the fact that she has the documents from the church and they’ve been notarized. rabbis have seen the documents and validated them. no more needs to be said on this matter as u can’t seem to get it through ur head that nancy is jewish and has had a difficult time reclaiming her heritage because of the idiocy of the rabbinate here in jerusalem.
as for teaching - my father taught for over 35 years, many of those years included him being a guidance counselor for the handicapped while he, himself has cerebral palsy. some of his students had cerebral palsy, some had spina bifida, and some had cystic fibrosis. many were thalidomide children, born without limbs. how many of ur students have u had to watch wasting away and dying? good for u that ur helping these students, but it doesn’t make u any less, or any more, than anyone else. it takes strong people for these kinds of jobs, mentally and physically, and they are to be commended for choosing this as their life’s work. u throw ur intellect around which only serves to make others see u as arrogant and all-knowing. try stepping down off that pedestal of urs and people just might see u as human.
no, u won’t grant me anything. i wouldn’t take it from u. ur condescending attitude toward my “dialectic skills”, only serves to further my point that u are an arrogant little girl, who has no respect for other people’s opinions. u only wish to criticize and shoot down. ur loss.
Hamsa& Sarah,
Ok you each got in some punches. Can we make nice, or at least stop jabbing at each other?
Nah, HalfSours, I’m only just inclined to take my red ink out and mark the stylistic and punctuation mistakes in that English literature BA (which, BTW, was only one of a wide array of subjects in my post-BA studies of Anglistics; not really impressive).
Besides, that person of apparently low reading comprehension skills does not understand that Nancy’s Jewishness is of no importance to me, but that I highly doubt the story she’s trying to sell off for its huge gaps in logic and obvious untruths. If pointing that out is condescending, that adjective has taken on a new meaning.
HS
I love the moral equasion between the two sides. Can’t we all just sing kumbayah?
Do you do that in geopolitics too? Oh, yeah. You’re a zionist.
C’mon, Mo, let’s sing “Kumbayah” next time I’m in town. You may wear earplugs if you’re concerned about kol isha.
Mo,
No moral equivalency. No kumbaya. I just don’t like being among the spectators in a pissing contest.
Are you @%^#(^*)^! crazy?!
I don’t do that shit.
Kumbaya is against my religion.
HS
No one asked you to be among the spectators in the pissing contest.
Mo, it just means “Are you there?” in some African dialect, nothing to worry about.
HalfSours, I’m sorry if you’ve been under that impression, but I occasionally feel the need to respond to a person in kind. It’s an easy way of telling if a person actually possesses a sense of humour or is just plain too much into themself. The above responses were rather telling in that regard.
In that context:
I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Oh. I have nothing against Africanese. It’s the way the word is used today that’s against my religion.
Who knows? Chabad might eventually adopt it.
Sarah,
sarah,
Far be it for me to stand between you and something you feel compelled to do.
Mo,
Be nice.
HS
You obviously misunderstood. check your facebook account
hamsa with you all the way, i too am burning up with fury at the terrible injustices and the pathetic escuses people use to keep their eyes closed. its called shooting the messenger.
so i will write in my intelligent, and highly brillant english so no one can call me scum. hamsa thank you. thank you thank you.
i so appreciate the few, very few who actually care enough to speak out and are not cowards.
by the way when you protect a pervert by not wanting to know -guess what that makes you
miriam - baby cakes i live here in jerusalem, not sure where you are. the sweet rabbi you love so much is kicked out of the beth din.
i dont give a damn what you believe - this is the truth.
and more important he has been defending and protecting the raping rabbi of jerusalem, thousands of very damaged and angry women are affected over a 20 year period.
dont give me all this self righteous hypocritical garbage you sprouted to nancy, who is my friend by the way.
i am not nancy - i will not be nice and kind and forgiving
like nancy will be. she wants peace.
i want truth and the end of the career of the raping rabbi’s including zalman cohen who i told this sentance to. your raping career is over.
to talk truth means no nice nice - sometimes it means heavy straight hard facts like you are an idiot miriam.
who the hell are you to deceide whether nancy is being over sensitive or whether she has a real complaint?
chances are if nancy is telling the truth many others have also been through nasty experiences like hers.
you dont have the wisdom or humility to know when someone is telling the truth but you have no problem defending a swine, pig, self righteous defender of a raping rabbi and his sidekick sarah vost who supplies him women and exhorts the converts.
who the hell are you to judge.
hamsa again thank you - keep on speaking the truth any way you want - remember truth has never been popular.
i pay a very heavy price for my obsession with the truth but then i am driven by a higher power to do so.
believe me, if i had a choice, many times i would let the idiots destroy themselves with their stupidity.
but it burns in my bones - i cannot keep quiet.maybe that is why there are people alive in this world today because i could not keep quiet, because i could not turn my head when a man was attacked and pretend i did not see.
no i went to rescue him and 10 men were kicking him in the head. thats just one story.
so miriam and co when did you ever put yourself out for someone else - when did you stop a man beating his baby.
a woman being raped, someone screaming for help.
when =- bet you cant name one time.
a black man in south africa told me that he walked home one saterday night and stopped physically 3 rapes.
he is more righteous and beautiful than you have ever been and will be.
you and all your self righteous - lashon hara friends.,
you who hide behind the uglytruth are even worse than the rapists. you give them support.
shame on you
we victims despise you for your hardheartedness.
how dare you - how dare you.
in the heavens when we all stand before the throne of judgement they sure are not interested in all the garbage you quote.
the black man in south africa, an old kind man will be at the top of list for praise, and by the way he was humble and did not think he had done anything special. he could help so he helped. yip he was not educated, could not read, simple man, nothing special about him. but miles ahead of all of us. he could have been murdered for what he did. rapes in south africa are so common its all the time. gang rapes aa well child rapes.
this simple man put his own life in danger to save 3 young girls,
i am so priviledged that he told me and that i can tell the world.
i dont remember his name,but his kind gentle face and soft words and humility will be with me forever.
from jerusalem
shalom
ruth
I’ve counted 159 mistakes in the above comment. I’ll bring / send anyone homemade cookies who is able to find more in, let’s say, less than ten-minutes’ time.
get a life. you actually counted till 159?! why didn’t you quit after the fifth or so?
I was giving the “intelligent, [sic] and highly brilliant english [sic]” a chance to impress me. It didn’t. The obvious parallels in erroneous orthography, syntax and style between the comments by two of the above commenters suggest it’s only just one person we’re dealing with; this leaves the possibility of various personalities unaffected.
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