H eadlines
Orthodox Activists in Israel Push for a Stronger
Response to Sexual Abuse Incidents
I SR AEL
SHIRA HANAU | JTA.ORG
ON THE MORNING of Dec.

31, most of the people bustling
through Beit Shemesh, a town
in central Israel with a large
haredi Orthodox population,
were getting ready for Shabbat.

Shoshanna Keats-Jaskoll had a
different mission.

Keats-Jaskoll was handing
out flyers with messages of
support for victims of sexual
abuse, in a public display
of solidarity at the end of a
wrenching week in many
Orthodox communities.

At the beginning of the week,
Chaim Walder, a celebrated
haredi Orthodox children’s
book author in Israel, died by
suicide after being accused by
numerous children and young
women of sexual abuse. The
Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel
visited Walder’s family. Then,
on Dec. 30, one of Walder’s
alleged victims, Shifra Horovitz,
also died by suicide, her friends
saying she had been distraught
by the response to his death.

For Keats-Jaskoll,
a co-founder of the Israeli
advocacy organization
Chochmat Nashim, which fights
extremism and sexism in the
Orthodox community, and for
many other Orthodox women,
the litany called for a coordi-
nated, public response. So she,
who is Orthodox but not haredi,
and a network of haredi activists
and volunteers printed 350,000
flyers and passed them out in
haredi areas before Shabbat.

Most of the reactions she got
were from mothers thanking
her for sharing her message, she
said. But one man told her he
didn’t know anyone who had
been hurt and questioned why
she was giving out the flyers —
keeping up the conversation for
far longer than she expected.

“This is really hard for
10 JANUARY 6, 2022
haredim, when you’re told to
trust leadership and there’s a
real cognitive dissonance:
something is wrong, the
leadership should be saying
something, if they’re not saying
something maybe it’s not true,
but if it’s not true what does that
mean?” Keats-Jaskoll said. “So
I think they’re going through
a real crisis of faith in a lot of
places.” The flyers that Keats-Jaskoll
and others handed out spoke
directly to that crisis of faith,
and to the religious values of
those whose confidence in their
leaders might be teetering. They
offered information about the
rabbinic court that heard testi-
mony against Walder, quoted
rabbinic sources about the
seriousness of sexual abuse
and answered questions about
why allegations first reported in
secular media should be trusted
in religious communities.

Since the allegations against
Walder first appeared in
November, the case has taken
an unusual trajectory in the
Orthodox world. After Eichler’s,
a Jewish bookstore in Brooklyn,
announced that it would stop
selling Walder’s books in
response to the Haaretz investi-
gation, many other repudiations
of Walder followed, in a flood
that advocates for survivors of
sexual abuse said seemed to
represent a watershed moment
for the community.

But after Walder’s suicide, it
became immediately clear that
any shift extended only so far.

In a number of haredi schools,
teachers reportedly spoke to
students about Walder’s suicide
as an example of the dangerous
effects of “lashon hara,” or
speaking negatively about
another person, and parents
were counseled not to discuss
the issue in detail with their
children. At Walder’s funeral, Dov
Weinroth, a lawyer and friend of
Walder, called out the journalists
at Haaretz who first published
the allegations against Walder
as “murderers.” And in the days
after Walder’s death, multiple
haredi Orthodox publications
published obituaries of Walder
that ended with the phrase “may
his memory be a blessing” while
failing to mention the allega-
tions against him.

Yet social media has given rise
to a different kind of reaction:
photos of Walder’s books in the
trash and poignant accounts
of difficult conversations
between parents and children
about abuse and what consti-
tutes inappropriate touching. A
social media campaign Monday
generated a flood of complaints
to haredi magazines about
their coverage. And the crowd-
funding campaign to print a
second run of flyers has raised
nearly $70,000 in just a few days.

“There’s a dissonance
between how people are
responding in their homes and
the way the institutions are
responding,” Keats-Jaskoll said.

There are signs that the
dissonance is having an effect
on traditional institutions. After
being criticized for visiting
Walder’s family, Ashkenazi
Chief Rabbi David Lau called
for victims of sexual abuse to
come forward. Weinroth, too,
made an about-face, apolo-
gizing for criticizing the
reporters who broke the story
in a Facebook post on Dec. 30
that urged readers to “believe
the complainants.”
“I picked up the phone and
called Aaron Rabinowitz,”
Weinroth wrote, referring to
one of the Haaretz reporters
who broke the story about
Walder. “Truthfully this was
the first time, and for a simple
reason: to apologize. At the end
of the day, I had never spoken
with him but I got up at the
funeral and demeaned him.”
Rabbi Natan Slifkin, author
JEWISH EXPONENT
Nearly 350,000 flyers expressing support for victims of sexual abuse
were distributed in Orthodox communities across Israel by a group of
volunteers on Dec. 31.
Courtesy of Shoshanna Keats-Jaskoll
and director of the Biblical
Museum of Natural History
in Beit Shemesh who writes
the blog Rationalist Judaism,
compared the reaction to the
Walder story to the haredi
community’s reaction to the
stampede at Mount Meron in
April last year where 45 men
were killed during an annual
religious gathering.

“The fact that Walder, clearly
emerging as a horrific predator,
was glorified after his death by
important charedi rabbis and
politicians and newspapers,
while those who attempted to
scream about the dangers are
being branded as evil gossipers
who drove him to his death, is
just too much for many people
in the charedi community,”
Slifkin wrote.

While calling out those
who blamed the victims for
Walder’s death and those who
encouraged silence rather than
shaming abusers, Slifkin noted
the signs of change, including
an editorial in Mishpacha
magazine’s Hebrew edition,
which, in an unusual move,
spoke directly about the topic
of sexual abuse.

“They [the victims] are not
the guilty ones. They are not the
abusers,” the magazine wrote.

“To them we say in the name of
the entire haredi community:
our hearts are with you. We
support you and we believe you,
unconditionally. And we will
do everything in our power as a
community to build a safer and
purer world for you.”
For Keats-Jaskoll and other
activists in the haredi Orthodox
community, the fallout from
the Walder case is indeed a
watershed moment — and one
that has to do with a broader
phenomenon of people taking
matters into their own hands
after questioning their religious
leaders. “I see more, more and more
and more people come to that
realization of we have to do this,
we can’t wait around,” Keats-
Jaskoll said.

“COVID helped with that.

I think seeing what happened
with COVID with leadership
denying what was happening
with COVID and watching
people get sick and die, it kind
of took a lot of people and shook
them up and say maybe our
leadership doesn’t know every-
thing,” she said.

She’s doing everything she
can to help activists within
haredi communities speed the
change — while fearing that
it won’t come fast enough for
victims of sexual abuse.

“We just can’t wait for the
next suicide,” Keats-Jaskoll
said. “We just can’t wait for
more people to kill themselves
to know that this is a massive
crisis.” l
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM