ISRAEL
Forward
By ELLI WOHLGELERNTER
FORWARD CORRESPONDENT
JERUSALEM — A charismatic, American-born rabbi and educator accused of sexually molesting his yeshiva students over a 25-year period failed to appear at a rabbinical court hearing convened to consider the accusations last week.
The no-show by the educator, Rabbi Matis Weinberg, prompted expressions of outrage from several of his alleged victims, who called it the latest in a long series of steps by Weinberg to avoid an inquiry into his conduct. One accuser said he was close to a decision to bring the case to the secular authorities.
But the head of the rabbinical tribunal, Rabbi Moshe Shternbuch, said he was unperturbed by Weinberg’s failure to appear, and voiced confidence that Weinberg would cooperate after he returned from a visit to the United States. “A person can go to America when he wants,” Shternbuch said. “Why should we be surprised? I hear he goes every year.”
The case against Weinberg comes at a time of acute sensitivity within the Orthodox community over accusations of rabbis abusing minors — and in some cases enjoying the protection of a wall of silence put up by other Orthodox rabbis and Orthodox institutions.
One rabbi, Baruch Lanner, formerly a regional director of the National Conference of Synagogue Youth, was sentenced last year in New Jersey to seven years in prison for abusing two teenage girls while serving as a yeshiva principal. He is currently free on appeal. A special commission appointed by the Orthodox Union, which sponsors the youth group, had concluded in a December 2000 report that Lanner had been abusing both girls and boys over two decades and that other union officials had known of the suspicions and covered them up.
