Book Review – One Above and Seven Below: A Consumer's Guide to Orthodox Judaism

Furthermore, the author supports (on his blog) Malka Leifer not being extradited to Australia (or alternatively, being locked up in Israel). That most certainly poisons that well for me.

Don’t bother with a review on my account, I’m not interested in what he has to say.

i love reading:)

I don’t think so, Joseph.

Look, he could have been completely correct about the minutiae of the halacha. To be honest, as you may have guessed (and are probably relying on), I am not well versed enough in the inyan to disprove his halachic statements. But it doesn’t matter- it’s one thing to know halachic facts and principles and another to apply them. There is an inyan for rabbanim to be rachmanim even in halacha- such as the rabbis who do everything they can to try to find a heter for a questionable chicken for a poor family, or after the Holocaust to find a heter for an agunah to remarry. Rabbanim can know the halacha backward and forward and be able to make a statement within the first ten seconds but still immerse themselves in research in order to potentially find a way to be merciful and apply the halacha mercifully. This is undoubted.

The thing is, the blogger is being very emphatic about being dan lekaf zechus when it comes to Malka Leifer and is showing no such inclination toward her accusers. He explicitly accuses them of being money-grubbing, casts aspersions on their desire to achieve justice (stating that they have no interest in her defending herself), and engages in victim shaming, casting blame on long-time victims by saying that after a certain amount of time it should be considered consensual if the victim hasn’t outwardly protested. He completely disregards and misreads current psychological wisdom about predators targeting abused and suffering children who are less likely therefore to see a way out- in fact, reading it the exact opposite way, as is the exact way which many proven molesters intend as they seek out victims. In all of this, there is NO HALACHIC ELEMENT which he is invoking to make these statements- besides being dan lekaf zechus, which he is IGNORING.

The fact is,

1) There are predators who are not pedophiles (though there is an equivalent for teenagers, if you must know), but gravitate towards teens because they may be in a position of power over them. It’s a similar concept to when we see a rabbi or therapist having an illicit relationship with a client or community member- there is an imbalance and misuse of power which is wrong in and of itself.

2) Israel is not, for better or for worse, a purely halachic state. According to its laws, it CANNOT judge her in front of a beis din and it CANNOT even judge her in a regular court. The only way for her to be tried is to be sent back to Australia. By being against this, no matter his protestations, he is in fact tacitly agreeing that she should not be forced to face up to the accusations made against her. I know that there are different interpretations of the extent of the requirement for dina d’malchusa dina, but he does have to understand that he is taking a position which has no basis in the legal realities in Israel and Australia.

3) Halacha is halacha. But middos are middos, and this man is displaying none. Rationalizing potential abuse (both physical and of power) and blaming the victims is just terrible middos. Halacha does not demand that- all it demands is an open mind. This man, I’d almost say, is being a naval birshus haTorah- using halacha as an excuse to make repugnant statements.

4) In that vein, let’s say theoretically that halachically, what happened was not a sin or a crime or anything actionable or punishable. But it was proved that it happened. Would that make the perpetrator blameless? There are plenty of places in halacha where we know that an injustice did occur but due to the rules of the legal system, it is not actionable (such as if there are not enough witnesses). Does that mean that no injustice was done? No, it just means that there is no way to punish the perpetrator. What this man is doing is not only removing the punishment but removing the blame from the (theoretical) perpetrator and the pain from the victim. He has no right to do that, and you cannot quote me any halacha which says that just because it was mishkav nekeivah with a woman above age 12 (daasan kalos, of course), the victim had no suffering or trauma. This man eliminated that from the picture by focusing purely on didactical matters, showing a clear agenda. Like I said, naval birshus haTorah- showing complete gasus in matters of ve’ahavta le’reiacha kamocha by ignoring real people’s potential suffering in exchange for milking halachic minutiae.

By the way, I’m also disturbed by his nonchalance about living two doors down from child molesters. I hope his kids are alright.

He’s disgusting. He sees nothing wrong with assault, going as far as to blame victims, he has some very strange ideas about autism, his formatting skills are subpar, he deliberately misspells inappropriate words as if that fixes them, and the way he goes out of his way to defend assault is just repulsive.

This happened to have caught my eye. I stopped posting but feel compelled to add my two cents. I read a large portion of the book, and feel the base message is misleading and silly. He basically argues that the label we use as chareidi is a misnomer (could be), and that we’re all chareidi (could be). Who cares? What the larger frum world means when they say chareidi is religious zealots from MS who throw things at cops and yell nazis. The literal translation of the word is irrelevant. Call them what you like, it doesn’t change the greater public’s distaste for those people.

Toi, agreed. And thanks for stopping in.

By the way, if we cannot post links, why do you display the HTML tags for hyperlinks?

YH

we allow links to other threads on this site -79

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