Shield and Silence: Shana Aaronson of Magen on Rabbinic Abuse in Orthodox Judaism

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/12/14

Shana Aaronson is an Orthodox Jewish advocate and expert on sexual abuse in faith-based communities. As executive director of Magen, she supports survivors in Israel and the diaspora, with a focus on Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox contexts. Her work combines case advocacy, community education, and international legal collaboration to hold abusers and enablers accountable. Drawing on personal experience and years with at-risk youth, she exposes grooming patterns, institutional coverups, and misuses of theology. She also trains schools, rabbis, and professionals on prevention, reporting duties, and trauma-informed response, insisting that community image must never be protected at the expense of children and vulnerable adults.

In this interview, Scott Douglas Jacobsen speaks with Aaronson about sexual abuse in Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities. Aaronson explains how insular cultures, modesty norms, lashon hara, chilul Hashem, and mesirahare weaponized to silence victims and shield abusers. She details predictable rabbinic grooming scripts, spiritual manipulation, and the misuse of “restorative justice.” The conversation addresses mandated reporting, failures of police and rabbinic authorities, and the theological misuse of purity and repentance. Aaronson emphasizes survivor autonomy, meaningful community accountability, and the need for rabbis to offer pastoral support without obstructing legal processes or safeguarding offenders.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: One noteworthy thing is that you observed this was not a topic discussed much in the community, nor, probably, outside of it. That is common across many communities. Everyone talks about Catholic cases now; it has become part of dark humour, irony, and legal proceedings. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles, as of late 2024, has paid out more than $1.5 billion in settlements to survivors of clergy sexual abuse. This is a significant issue. I know there is a growing contingent within Eastern Orthodox Christian communities. When it comes to Orthodox Jewish communities, do they have many of the same characteristics regarding not talking about it?

Shana Aaronson: Yes—absolutely. I have found this consistently, and I hear it any time I speak to activists or professionals in the field of abuse prevention or victim advocacy who come from within faith-based communities. The truth is, any insular community—any community with a sense of an internal and an external, an “us versus them,” an ingrained priority to avoid airing dirty laundry—will be worried about how things might look to outsiders. The dynamic is not too different from cases that have come out of Hollywood, Ivy League universities, or any place that feels it must maintain a particular image to the world and even to its own community members, however one defines “community.” I do not think this is unique to any religious community; I do not believe it is unique to religious communities at all. This is a dynamic of self-preservation, where the image must be protected at all costs. Sometimes that cost is human beings. That is unacceptable. At least, I certainly believe so. But it has taken many years for the shift to begin—away from sacrificing individuals on the altar of community image.

Jacobsen: What is the pathway of healing? It will obviously be individual, but there should be trends. What are those trends?

Aaronson: It is essential to differentiate between the pathways to healing for individuals and those for the community. There is overlap, but  each individual’s experience is different, as is each community. For many victims, healing includes seeing their abuser in jail. For many, it involves receiving an apology, acknowledgment, or validation of what they experienced—from the perpetrator, from their family, or from the institution where the abuse happened or that allowed it to happen. For some, healing comes from personal growth: “I went on to accomplish things no one thought I could—including myself—despite the trauma I experienced.” It becomes a sense of victory: “I built the life I dreamed of, despite everything I went through, and no one can take that away from me.”

On a community level, it is crucial to make distinctions, because I hear this so often—from clergy and from others: “Why do you not move on with your life? You could be doing so many great things if you focused on your career/family/future. Just move forward.” They do not say “get over it” because that would sound obnoxious, so they couch it in gentle language about “personal growth.” But it becomes a way of avoiding responsibility—avoiding accountability for what happened. While for many individual survivors, focusing on themselves and succeeding may indeed be their most significant source of healing, that does not absolve the community of its obligation to engage in serious self-reflection, acknowledge what was done wrong, and recognize the pain caused—whether directly or indirectly—to victims of abuse.

The community must then take concrete steps to ensure these things cannot happen again, or, if they do, that they are addressed swiftly and appropriately rather than swept under the rug as they traditionally were.

Jacobsen: Sure. My dad had trouble metabolizing ethanol. I was in Israel for the first time in July, and then we came back and we held the funeral. I remember the same kind of response: “[Get over it.] He is your father,” that sort of thing. I am getting a similar tone in what you are describing. You do not mean community reckoning in the sense of everyone dealing with it the same way, because this typically comes from rabbinical authority top-down. So in all these interviews I have done so far, acknowledgement has been the biggest thing. They would not even care about financial payouts. They want acknowledgement from the community and from the authority. What does that reckoning, responsibility, and accountability look like from rabbinical authority?

Aaronson: Number one, it is precisely what it sounds like. There has to be a public acknowledgement that we did not do what we should have done. We failed in our mission of protecting children. Or we may have to step back even further and first acknowledge that we have a responsibility to protect children and that we have failed to do so. And that has to be accompanied by, “We are going to do better in X, Y, and Z,” with specific steps.

Sometimes that step is: “We are not going to get involved in abuse cases because we are not qualified.” Or: “We will offer support, but within the limits of our training.” I have many thoughts about the role of clergy in addressing abuse. I speak about this often now. For many years in the Orthodox Jewish community—I cannot speak for all communities, but certainly ours—there was much talk about the need for rabbis to step back. “Rabbis have no business dealing with abuse”. “They are not qualified”. “They should not intervene.” “They should not be telling victims what to do or deciding for them.”

To some degree, that is obviously accurate  and I still stand by that. Rabbis should not tell victims what to do about their abuse. There is clearly a significant issue of rabbinical overreach in many cases where that happens. However, the message that rabbis have no place at all proved more complicated.

I say this as an Orthodox Jewish woman who does have a rabbi. Still, I would never ask him an abuse question because it is not his job or his authority — unless he had a professional qualification and licensure, which he does not. My rabbi would be the first to say, “I am not a psychologist, I am not a doctor, why are you asking me that?” That is the most important thing for any professional: to be willing to say, “This is not within my purview.”

Around seven or eight years ago, I was supporting a victim who had complex PTSD. She had been sexually abused by her father for many years and suffered tremendously. She left Canada and moved to Israel on her own at seventeen or eighteen to get away from her family. She was remarkable — she sought out every resource and every therapy she could find, and still does to this day.

There was a point, and I do not remember how it came up, when it became clear to me that it mattered to her to hear from a rabbi — not just any rabbi, but a senior rabbi. She was not looking for permission to go to the police; she was not going to the police. She lived in Israel, and he was in Canada. That was not the issue. She needed something supportive.

Because of my work, I know many rabbis and which ones tend to be supportive. I spoke to one of the rabbis I regularly work with. One of his rabbis is a senior rabbi in Jerusalem. He coordinated the meeting and told me when she should go.

She met with this rabbi for about ten minutes. He blessed her. He blessed her with healing. He told her she is wonderful, that she has a beautiful soul, and that she should go on to do everything in her life.

He told her to do everything she wants, to marry at the right time, and to raise children who will be healthy and happy. It was a completely transformative experience for her. It forced me to reconsider my position. I needed to stop pushing rabbis out entirely because there is an important place for them in pastoral support.

In specific communities — especially in the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox world — everything runs through the rabbi. The rabbi is involved in almost every major decision, whether buying a house or having more children. To tell a family whose child has been abused that the rabbi has nothing to do with this may sometimes lead to a better-handled case legally and clinically, but on the other hand, you deprive them of a primary source of comfort and guidance.

There has to be a way for rabbis to be involved for families who need that support, but only within legal and appropriate limits. What must not happen is rabbis deciding whether victims should or should not go to the police, or whether social services should or should not be involved. That is not the rabbi’s job. But the spiritual support and pastoral presence can be significant for some people, and it is not right to take that away from them. That is something I have learned over the course of doing this work for thirteen years.

Jacobsen: What about the duty to report? I know there are places where laws have been changed so that clergy have to follow the same standards as other professions. They may be educated and qualified in certain areas, but are still not held to identical standards. Could this be implemented in Orthodox communities?

Aaronson: In Israel, all adults are mandated reporters. That includes rabbis. Recently, I have been involved in a case, in an Orthodox community, where the rabbi witnessed the perpetrator confessing to raping a teenager. The prosecutor called him as a witness, as they should have. He tried to claim confidentiality, essentially claiming something akin to Catholic priest-penitent privilege, which he does not have. He is an Orthodox rabbi.

There is no such thing in Jewish law. I am forgetting the exact term for the Catholic sacramental seal. Still, that rule — the absolute prohibition on revealing confession — does not exist in Judaism. This is probably a more complicated issue within Catholic communities because it is literally a religious rule. If I am asked to choose between two rules, I will always select the rule that protects children. But I understand the complexity for lawmakers if they feel they are infringing on religious practice.

In the Orthodox Jewish community, however, there is no such requirement. Rabbis are not bound by confidentiality toward constituents in any context, including confession. This rabbi claimed it only because he is in a predominantly Catholic country and could exploit the confusion. I am now gathering letters stating unequivocally that this privilege does not exist and that he is lying to avoid testifying.

As for clergy being mandated reporters — yes, they should be. I acknowledge the complexity of religion when it directly contradicts religious law. Still, in general, we should err on the side of whatever keeps children safe.

Jacobsen: Of those rabbis who commit evil acts, what are their typical patterns? Do they flee the country? Do they go out in public and say, “This woman is trying to destroy my life”? Do they engage in legal battles? Do they pressure other rabbis into silence? Do they avoid accountability at all costs? What are their typical patterns?

Aaronson: Rabbis who are perpetrators are almost predictable. My staff  talk about this often — the utter lack of creativity. It is the same script over and over. You feel like you are watching a train crash that you can see coming from miles away, but you cannot stop it.

There are typical steps. It is essential to differentiate between cases where the victims are children and cases where the victims are adults or adolescents. The dynamics differ.

In every case, there is grooming. What grooming looks like depends on whether the rabbi is targeting children or adults. When I say adults, it is usually women, though not always.

With boys, grooming often begins with discussions about modesty laws or the prohibition on masturbation. There are various Jewish laws regarding male masturbation and the “spilling of seed.”

Jacobsen: The sin of Onan?

Aaronson: Yes. So it very often starts with that — framed as spiritual guidance. The rabbi asks, “Do you struggle with this?” And the answer is yes, because everyone does. You will not find a teenage boy who has not dealt with sexual thoughts. That is normal developmentally. But the rabbi presents it as a spiritual failing requiring intervention.

So the rabbi offers “help.” It begins with guidance and conversation, then progresses into outrageously inappropriate discussions of masturbation practices, and in many cases, escalates to molestation or sexual assault. It is always wrapped in the narrative of spiritual growth: “I am helping you become a better person and a better Jew.”

There has to be justification, because children raised in Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox communities know that modesty is central and that something is off about this kind of conversation. The built-in justification — religious improvement — is compelling. I have heard this story repeated countless times. There is not much variety.

With adolescent girls and women, the narrative is different. Sometimes it is framed around “preparing them for marriage.” But very often, the manipulations take on cult-like qualities:

“I can see your soul.”

“Our souls are connected.”

“In a past life, we were married.”

“If we join together, we will bring the Messiah.”

This motif comes up far more often than people expect.

This isn’t new- There is an old story from a European Jewish community many generations ago. A woman’s husband was travelling — as husbands often did for work in those days — and a man arrived at her home asking for lodging. She let him stay. In the morning, he told her he had a dream in which God commanded him to impregnate her so she could give birth to the Messiah.

She believed him. She said yes, thinking she was fulfilling a divine command. When the husband returned, there was an entire fallout. The details vary in different retellings, but the core pattern is identical to what we see today.

The scripts barely change across centuries. The only innovation is the costume.

There was a whole halachic question about whether the husband could stay married to her, because in Orthodox Judaism, a man is generally prohibited from remaining married to a wife who has committed adultery. But what struck me was that the narrative was the same nonsense from 200 years ago — the identical spiritual manipulation. So yes, there is often much mystical language, claims of spiritual destiny, and promises of cosmic outcomes. It is not always the Messiah; sometimes it is vague “spiritual energy” that will be unleashed if they are together.

With abusive rabbis, there is also a sinister element: the twisting and perversion of religious texts. They will cite obscure sources or misapply Jewish law to justify what they are doing. They might acknowledge that, yes, a man and a woman who are not married are prohibited from being alone together — but then they present some convoluted exception. In Orthodox Judaism, women traditionally receive far less advanced textual education than men, especially compared to rabbis who study for many years. It is hard to argue with someone who has vastly more knowledge and uses that authority to manipulate you. It is like trying to contradict a doctor when you only have a second-grade understanding of biology. If he tells you something is medically necessary, your instinct is to defer.

I remember one woman who told me the rabbi gave her explicit instructions for sexual acts she had to describe to him. She did not want to comply. He told her that if she did not follow his instructions, the time he had spent advising her would become a “waste of Torah learning,” which is considered a sin. He said this would be held against her by God in heaven. That was his leverage.

When we went to the police, I had to explain to secular officers why this was the psychological equivalent of putting a gun to her head. To them, it sounded absurd — “Then tell him to go jump in a lake.” But that misses the point. When you genuinely believe you will be punished by God, eternally, for disobeying a rabbinic directive, the coercion is absolute. This woman was not a child; she was a 35-year-old mother of five. Explaining to outsiders why she could not simply “say no” is extraordinarily difficult. Consent becomes complicated in cases of rabbinic abuse involving adults. The manipulation is intense.

This happens with men, too — spiritual manipulation is not gendered. When the film Spotlight came out, many of my colleagues  cried through it because it was so familiar. There is a line — I am paraphrasing — where the victim  says that the abuse was as if God himself  is instructing him to do something sexual. That is precisely the dynamic: if someone convinces you that God Himself is commanding the act, what are you supposed to do? Say no to God? For someone raised in that environment, that is not psychologically possible. It is hard to explain this to anyone who has not lived in a community where spiritual authority is absolute, because on the surface, it does not make logical sense.

Jacobsen: When did you muster the courage to start? Was it something internal, or did it grow over time with support from someone — a relative, an aunt, someone who encouraged you?

Aaronson: It is interesting because I got into this work almost by mistake. I originally wanted to work with at-risk youth based on my own experiences. I had sexual abuse experiences of my own, but I did not identify them as abuse until much later. It was only after I had been working in this field for years and had my own children that it dawned on me. I was thinking about those experiences and suddenly realized that if someone called me and described what had happened to me, I would immediately tell them they had been abused, which meant I had been abused. I had never conceptualized it that way because the perpetrators were children. To me, it had just been this painful, uncomfortable “game” these kids were playing.

So it was not some conscious drive where I thought, “I went through this, now I am going to make sure no child ever goes through it again.” Maybe subconsciously that was there — you do not need to be Freud to make that connection — but consciously I was focused on at-risk teens, kids acting out in all sorts of ways. I worked with adolescents dealing with different kinds of trauma, and I found I could not escape the sexual trauma. Eighty-five percent of the teens I worked with had been sexually abused. That seemed bizarre.

I also had, as a teenager, many friends who had been sexually abused, even though I never used that word at the time. A few incidents still stand out in my mind. When I was fifteen, I had a friend who was raped and thought she might be pregnant. She could not have been pregnant, I know that now that I know basic biology, but we did not know that at the time. She refused to buy a pregnancy test, so I went to get it for her. I was in my Jewish private school uniform — button-down blouse, pleated skirt — and I walked into the pharmacy convinced someone was going to arrest me. I was sure the universe was going to crack open, alarms would go off, a divine hand would descend from the sky, something. I thought there was no way a visibly ultra-Orthodox teenage girl could buy a pregnancy test without being carted away. No one even looked at me. I walked out stunned.

She took the test, and we sat on the floor in a public bathroom, praying for two minutes. I will never forget the scene. Even at fifteen, I thought: where are the adults? Something is wrong here. Why are we doing this without any adults? I do not blame my parents — I could have told them, but I did not want my friend getting in trouble. Still, even then, I knew the situation was wrong. A fifteen-year-old thinking she is pregnant should not be navigating that alone. That was when I decided: someday, I am going to do something about this.

So professionally, I went into work with at-risk youth. That is what I thought I was doing. But I could not get away from the sexual trauma. It kept pulling me back, and eventually that became the core of my work.

Jacobsen: What is the worst case you have come across? Or if one does not come to mind, one so absurd that it stands out? I will preface this by saying the Jewish Orthodox community is complicated. Americans have gotten over their “no Jews, no Blacks, no Irish, no dogs” phase over the last hundred years, but the cultural baggage still hovers. I did an anthology on antisemitism, speaking with people across the spectrum—from Sacha Roytman, to Alan Milwicki at the Southern Poverty Law Center, to Holocaust survivors. It became a constellation of experts: personal experience, academic research, community work. 

It is an odd subject. Not straightforward. Then you get into the fringe communities — the people who believe the Rothschilds own the moon and operate a secret lunar base directing world domination. Then the lizard-people believers, claiming the lizard-people are Jews.

Planetary real estate or satellite real estate gets strange. It layers into this, too. Within the extreme cases of an extreme act of abuse—whether over a period of time or a single stark instance—what comes to mind for you? Those you have helped or those you have read or heard about?

Aaronson: Unfortunately, quite a few come to mind that were some of the worst. There is one case I am dealing with now, or more recently, where the victim was abused by her father—sexually abused and raped. That was not even the worst part, which sounds like an impossible thing to say. Still, the psychological abuse and manipulation, and the cult aspect, were devastating. He sexually abused her and raped her on several occasions in a cemetery. Cemeteries are pitch black, and the experience  is utter terror.

Jacobsen: What place do cemeteries and the dead hold in Orthodox Jewish theology?

Aaronson: There is a distinct place for them. A few years ago, we were spending time with my husband’s cousin, who is Christian, and she was in Israel for a couple of weeks. We were talking about the significance of graves because, in Orthodox Judaism, grave sites have spiritual significance. There is an idea that at the 30-day mark after a person’s death, the soul ascends a bit higher. During the first seven days—the initial mourning period—the soul ascends but remains connected to the physical world. As time goes on, the connection shifts.

I cannot fully explain it because nobody truly understands it—the relationship between the physical and the spiritual stretches and changes. At 30 days, the soul ascends to another level, closer to God. At one year, it continues to climb, and each subsequent year is described as another step higher. There are also teachings about certain exceptionally righteous people whose souls ascend immediately. So the details are not fully knowable, but there is definite significance attached to grave sites.

We go and pray at the grave site. It is not permitted to pray to the deceased person—that is considered idolatry and is absolutely prohibited in Judaism. We pray to God, asking that the person’s soul serve as a conduit to bring our prayers before God’s throne, asking for help, protection, or healing.

There is also a concept of ritual impurity. In Judaism, impurity is defined as the absence of potential holiness. When a person dies, the body becomes ritually impure because it no longer houses the soul. Priests—Kohanim, descendants of Aaron, Moses’ brother—are not permitted to enter cemeteries because they may not contract impurity from the dead. They can enter hospitals only under limited circumstances. So a cemetery is simultaneously a spiritually significant place and a place of ritual impurity.

What this father did included tying her up and reciting passages from the Torah about the Akeidat Yitzchak, the binding of Isaac. This was part of the psychological terror. 

Jacobsen: That word—terror—is often overused, but this is the appropriate context. 

Aaronson: This was not fear that could be managed. It was something overwhelming and otherworldly, and she had nowhere to go with it. The powerlessness was total. Abuse by a parent is among the worst because the horror of the sexual abuse is compounded by the knowledge that this person whose job was to protect them instead violated them . That was one of the worst cases I have ever heard about. The PTSD—complex PTSD—I witnessed in her was intense. It was the first time I had ever seen dissociation at that extreme. I was with her at the police station when she began describing the scenarios and the rapes, and she completely shifted. She became a five-year-old. It was the closest thing I could compare to what dissociative identity disorder is often portrayed as.

Pop culture has sensationalized DID—films, television, all of it romanticizes dissociation—but this was the first time I saw, in person, something close to that. There was one person in the room, and as she spoke, her voice changed. It went much higher, like a little girl. Her vocabulary dropped significantly. Her word choice and sentence grammar shifted. She went from being an adult woman to a child right in front of me. She was crying, shaking, rocking back and forth. She looked like a little girl in crisis.

There isn’t a perfect way to help in that situation. The only thing to do was help her stay as grounded as possible—remind her she was safe, remind her to drink water, remind her to breathe.

Jacobsen: Drink water?

Aaronson: Yes. It could be juice, but drinking something is grounding. When someone is dissociating or intensely triggered, one recommended grounding technique is reconnecting with the physical world through the five senses. Taste, touch, movement—all of it helps. Taking off your shoes and putting your feet on the ground allows that. Fresh air helps—the temperature change can interrupt the dissociation. It is all about helping her stay connected to the physical reality of the here and now, reminding her that she is safe, that she is brave, that she is doing something difficult. But you can see how tenuous her grasp on reality becomes as she relives everything.

That was definitely one of the most extreme cases. But in general, it is often the re-traumatizing cases that affect me the most. I have had a few cases of young people who were abused and then went to therapy, or what they believed was therapy. I say “therapy” because more often than not, it is not a therapist. It is some religious do-gooder masquerading as a therapist.

Jacobsen: America has plenty of those.

Aaronson: We have a big problem here because there is no licensure. In Israel, there is no license for “therapists.” Social workers are licensed. Psychologists are licensed. Psychiatrists, of course, are medical doctors and are licensed. But “therapy” itself is entirely an unlicensed field. There is no such thing as a licensed therapist here. It simply does not exist. That does not mean there are no qualified practitioners—but the lack of regulation allows some truly harmful people to practice.

Jacobsen: What kind of harm? Some read horoscopes or claim they can read the stars to help with chakras.

Aaronson: The religious Jewish world is less astrology and more “spiritual guidance.” Things like: “If you do not reconcile with your father, God will hate you because you are obligated to honour your parents,” and similar manipulative nonsense.

Those cases get to me every time: someone who was abused finally finds the courage to seek help, and then the person they turn to abuses them again. It is the rare moment they opened up—and it is exploited.

Again, one does not need to be Freud to understand why, as someone who has dedicated my life to this and paid many prices for it, I am so irrationally angry about cases like this. Or perhaps not irrationally. It is rational. It is a kind of moral impurity—something that violates what should be sacred: trust in a moment of vulnerability.

But it is those cases that get to me—when someone calls and describes the situation. Their uncle abused them, and they struggled for years, and now they are eighteen and afraid to start dating. So they go to this “counsellor,” and I know exactly where it is going, and it is nowhere good. I wish I could make it stop, but it is what it is.

Jacobsen: In my interviews so far—this will be for the second anthology, but the first anthology—every single person, whether a leading organization, a researcher, a victim telling their story, or someone building a database of abusers, all of them have sacrificed something. Often many things, and often significantly. As a journalist, it is a complex topic, but that pattern is entirely consistent. I am comfortable saying that at this point because it has been literally everyone.

So let us imagine we overlay Lord of the Rings mythology onto Orthodox Judaism—stick with me. This is the friendliest, lightest touch, given the subject’s weight. Remember the scene when Gandalf and Saruman realize one another’s betrayal and fight with their staffs—throwing each other around without touching, using invisible force? The unseen world of Tolkien.

So: rabbis who abuse. The minority who commit terrible acts. They often use rabbinical texts and aphorisms to justify their behaviour or manipulate theologically, often in ways that create sheer terror for the victim, whether boys or, more predominantly, adult women. We should be clear: the pattern is mainly pedophilic abuse against boys and sexual assault against women.

On the other side, for those who have gone through these experiences, what within the community—or within scripture—can be used to provide comfort? Earlier, you mentioned the case of the woman who went to a senior rabbi who told her she had a “beautiful soul,” and how the fact that it came from him mattered. It was a kind of salve. So what can you use—the Gandalf side of the equation?

Aaronson: That is a layered question, or perhaps a layered answer.

Spiritually, the first thing is this: many victims ask what these abuses mean for the texts themselves. If something sacred can be twisted so severely, what does that say about the tradition? In this particular area, Orthodox Judaism has a clear conceptual framework.

I mentioned earlier the idea of death and impurity. In Orthodox Judaism, impurity is not “dirtiness.” It is the absence of tremendous potential for holiness. The body becomes impure after death because the soul—something holy—has departed. The impurity is the vacuum left behind by what was profoundly sacred.

The same principle applies elsewhere: equal potential for holiness comes with equal potential for distortion. That is the theological logic. It is the reason given for why menstrual blood creates ritual impurity, not because something is dirty, but because there was a potential for life that has passed. After childbirth, there is also a period of impurity for the same reason: the presence or departure of immense spiritual potential.

It is a kind of spiritual yin and yang: holiness and impurity are linked because they share the exact origin—potential.

So for victims wrestling with spiritual questions—”What does this mean for my faith?”—there is a built-in framework. Not an “answer,” because healing is not about platitudes. But the idea is this: if anything, the fact that holiness can be perverted so severely is itself evidence of how much power existed in the first place.

It can also mean that you, too, contain that potential for holiness, spirituality, and comfort—if you choose that direction. I also believe that anyone who decides to leave the Orthodox community or any religious community after being abused within it should receive full support and resources. No one should have to remain in the place that caused their trauma. But it is equally wrong to force victims out. Those who want to stay deserve support to stay, and those who wish to leave deserve support to go. Someone whose choices were taken from them should be given every possible opportunity for real choice.

We say this constantly to families. I get calls from parents asking, “How do I force my daughter to go to the police?” You will not help your daughter heal from sexual assault by forcing her to do anything. You can give her information. You can empower her. You can support her. You can ensure she has every resource. You cannot decide for her. Even if you could, it would harm her, because it recreates the same absence of control and autonomy that defined the abuse.

So that is one part of your question.

There are also many traditional texts a person can turn to. There are passages about the intrinsic holiness of the soul—how nothing can take that away. For many victims, that raises more questions, because they ask, “What does that mean about my abuser and his soul?” That becomes complex. One of the things we emphasize is that everything comes down to choices. The victim did not choose harm; the abuser chose to harm. And in Orthodox Judaism, sins against another human being are considered more offensive to God than sins against God. If I do not pray in the morning, God is not pleased. But if I harm my fellow human being, God is grieved even more, because I am damaging His creation.

The metaphor is simple: if my child tells me he hates me, fine, children say things. But if my children hurt each other, that wounds me more deeply. That is the idea.

And then there is the matter of forgiveness. In Jewish theology, sins against God are forgiven on Yom Kippur. If you go through the day—even imperfectly—you emerge forgiven for sins against God. But sins against other people are never forgiven unless you apologize, make amends, and seek forgiveness from the person you harmed. Without that, nothing is forgiven.

This often becomes the single most significant point of clarity for victims. They say, “Am I required to do the  mitzvah, a good deed, of  forgiving my abuser?” And my response is always: your abuser has not even apologized. Why are we discussing forgiveness? If he comes, apologizes, makes amends, and demonstrates change, then we can discuss forgiveness. But the expectation of automatic forgiveness—when the abuser has not taken the first kindergarten-level step of apologizing—is misplaced.

People often reach out to me when an abuser is exposed, saying things like, “This is lashon hara, evil speech,” or, “What if he already did teshuvah—what if he repented?” And I answer: I know he did not, because he has not spoken to the victim. Teshuvah requires that as step number one. Without that, nothing else counts.

So those are the pieces that tend to come up most often—not exactly “comfort,” but direction for victims who are struggling spiritually.

Jacobsen: What is the highest-profile case that has happened in Israel, in your opinion?

Aaronson: There have been some significant cases in Israel. I would say the biggest was Moshe Katsav, the former President of Israel. He was convicted of rape and sexual assault. I was not involved. I was in undergrad at the time—2007, something like that. I was young, I was not involved in that case at all.

The most significant case we handled directly and heavily was Yehuda Meshi-Zahav. He was the founder and chairman of ZAKA, one of Israel’s leading emergency response and victim-recovery organizations. He was a nasty dude. 

Jacobsen: Emergency-response guy causing emergencies.

Aaronson: There was alarming material in that case. ZAKA is involved in handling bodies after terror attacks and disasters. They still are. They also work as paramedics, but their primary role historically has been the dignified recovery of bodies in accordance with Jewish law.

When I was a teenager growing up here, it was during the Second Intifada. Buses were exploding constantly. You would be out with friends and hear nonstop sirens, and you knew a bus had been blown up. ZAKA was everywhere. There are strict Jewish laws about treating bodies with dignity—calling them “impure” has a technical meaning. Still, the requirement is that bodies must be recovered, preserved, and buried fully, including any lost blood or tissue.

So this organization was revered. Meshi-Zahav himself, with his long white beard, was seen as an angel. He would appear on television at every bombing scene. That was the image for decades.

When I got the first call about him—from a staff member—I remember exactly where I was standing. It was 10 p.m. If he was calling me then, it meant something serious. He said, “A journalist contacted me. She’s investigating allegations against Yehuda Meshi-Zahav. She wants to work with us because she believes victims need advocates. We also do some private investigative work, so can we take this on?”

It took us nine months to find the first victim willing to speak. Everyone we found knew another victim. Everyone said, “I’m not going to be the first.” No one wanted to be first. Then, finally, we found the first person willing to speak.

It was a man. Meshi-Zahav abused men and women. And children. Anything he could. It was extremely sick.

I will never forget that case. The depravity, the confidence, the scale—it went on for decades. He was already in his early seventies, and he had been abusing substances since he was a teenager. Nobody stopped him. One woman described how he raped her for the first time in a hotel. He used to invite women to “meetings” in hotels. It turned out all those meetings were him assaulting women, but of course, she did not know that when she went in. He showed up—

Aaronson: He arrived in uniform, in his special car. He had a vehicle with lights and sirens, and he was a public figure. The man was recognizable. (He is dead now. He killed himself.) She said what struck her was that he showed up, parked right in front of the hotel entrance, and used his emergency-vehicle status to park illegally but prominently. He was not hiding. He walked into a hotel room with a woman who was not his wife.

Jacobsen: A brazen abuser.

Aaronson: Yes, so brazen, and he had gotten away with it for so many years that he was completely untouchable. What came out afterward—now there are documentaries about this. The documentary is called Meshi-Zahav. It is in Hebrew, unfortunately, but they added subtitles because it was released abroad. For me, the most shocking part was that it had gone on for so long and so many people knew. What also came out is that the police knew, and the police covered for him for years, because he was an informant. They decided it was worth allowing him to continue abusing people because he provided information. They said they did not know the extent of the abuse. If they had known how many victims there were, maybe they would not have made that decision. One would hope.

I was curious what number of people it is acceptable to rape in exchange for being a police informant. If I am an informant for the police and I bring them information, what crimes am I permitted to commit? Is there a list? Do I get a get-out-of-jail-free card for any number of crimes? Do I receive perks? Parking privileges near the Western Wall? I do not know.

Jacobsen: Some noteworthy names of abusers inside Israel, out of the rabbinical community. Rona Metzger, former Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel.

Aaronson: We supported one of his victims. 

Jacobsen: Mordechai Elon, a star of the Religious Zionist world, was convicted. Former head of Yeshivat HaKotel. Eliezer “Eliezer” Berland, a Breslov leader of Shuvu Banim. Meyer Wilder—hugely influential author and therapist, found guilty in a rabbinical court, though not a criminal court: Ze’ev Kopelovich, Rosh Yeshiva of Netiv Meir, former dean at Netiv Meir in Jerusalem.

Aaronson: I remember that one. 

Jacobsen: Malouf Amidav Crispin, Chief Rabbi of Kiryat Bialik, near Haifa. That case is still ongoing. Yazdi—Moshe Yazdi, Jerusalem Kabbalistic Rabbi. I could see them using Kabbalistic frameworks to rationalize that sort of thing.

Aaronson: Berland was a big one. Berland’s community is a cult. They are officially designated as a cult. He is an evil man. 

Jacobsen: Daniel Bertičevsky, an Israeli rabbi arrested abroad and charged with rape, assault, and offences against family members of rabbinic witnesses. Any thoughts on those?

Aaronson: Bad dudes. Really bad. There is not much more to add. Nothing good.

Jacobsen: Internationally, what has come up among the “most wanted,” or best-worst, however you categorize it: Rabbi Baruch Lanner in the United States—convicted in 2002. Rabbi Daniel Greer, New Haven, Connecticut; Rabbi David Samuel—Cyprus, and then Rabbi Ezra Scheinberg. He was in Israel—internationally relevant as well.

When I look at some of these names, what I see are two major categories of offenders. First, the completely brazen ones: whatever works at any time, any authority they have, they will abuse it. Second, the covert ones: the ones who say, “We must bring the Mashiach into being,” or who use Kabbalah and its numerology to justify their abusive behaviour. They operate in a community that is already very closed, which makes it much easier to take advantage. Fair?

Aaronson: Yes.

Jacobsen: Anything on what we have covered so far before I continue?

Aaronson: No, nothing else.

Jacobsen: Does grooming in these communities differ in any significant way?

Aaronson: In some ways, yes. I mentioned earlier that they often use religious or spiritual justifications for the abuse, whether inevitable or ongoing. So the grooming itself usually includes some explanation, justification, and preparation that are religious in nature or at least tied to it.

Now, obviously, it depends on whether we are talking about abuse committed by relatives or others in the community. Those dynamics might be similar anywhere. But if we are specifically talking about spiritual or religious leaders, then yes—there is usually something of that religious nature built directly into the grooming process.

Jacobsen: I interviewed Dr. Amos Guiora, who studies enablers. He is a former IDF lieutenant. In his academic work—he is now in Utah, in the Mormon community—he often talks about enablers. (People frequently mistake me for an evangelical youth pastor or a Mormon missionary. I do not fault them for this. “Hello, my name is Elder Jacobsen.”)

In his work on enablers, he outlines a middle ground for accountability among the community, the perpetrator, and the victim. How does this enabling work in Orthodox communities?

Aaronson: There are a few common dynamics that we see repeatedly. Number one is modesty standards. There is a false assurance of safety that we are told exists—or that is given to us—because we are holy and modest, especially for women: the idea that if we dress modestly, we will be protected from indecent acts by the men around us.

Not only is that untrue, but it often works to the victim’s disadvantage. It is not just that modesty is not a protective factor; it becomes a risk factor because people rely on it and assume it provides the safety it absolutely does not. So it is not that dressing modestly intrinsically causes more abuse—obviously not—but because people rely on it as if it were protective, it opens the door further. It is a charming and evil lie.

If you walk around believing you cannot be harmed, you live your life differently. You act more boldly. 

I always tell my kids: every time they point out something strange in another religion, I point them to something equally odd that we do. We all have our own eccentricities. Judging others while ignoring our own is a universal human sport.

Jacobsen: Are there other problems around that?

Aaronson: Another problem, though, is the hypocrisy around women’s bodies. Women’s bodies are described as holy, precious—”a diamond.” Cover your diamonds because they will be stolen. Yet if a woman is assaulted, suddenly talking about it is “inappropriate.” So the message becomes: “Protect your diamonds at all costs, but if the diamonds are stolen, stay silent.” That contradiction is everywhere.

Behind me, though you cannot see clearly because the camera is blurred, is a picture of the Chafetz Chaim, a rabbi. That was not his actual name; his real name was Yisrael Meir Kagan. He is famous for his writings on lashon hara, evil speech—slander, gossip, speaking negatively about others. His teachings are constantly misused to silence victims of sexual abuse in the Orthodox community: “The Chafetz Chaim says you may not speak badly about others.”

Yet in his book, he explicitly writes about the exceptions—to’elet, meaning a constructive purpose—cases where you are required to speak up to protect others. Those exceptions are apparent. But they are often ignored.

We put his picture on the wall as a statement. Because he is used so often to silence victims, I wanted it to be a symbolic reclamation. You do not get to twist his teachings. He would have been one of the strongest voices insisting that abuse be reported and stopped. People ask me all the time if the placement is intentional. Very much so. Otherwise, I probably would not have a rabbi’s portrait on my wall at all.

Jacobsen: I want to build on lashon hara—forbidden speech—and chilul Hashem, desecration of God’s name. The first, as you noted, is used to protect abusers. The second, I imagine, is also used to protect abusers because “we must not shame the community.” Are these ever used together? Are they always used together?

Aaronson: Often, yes. We get the usual sequence. First comes modesty—number one. Next is lashon hara: “You cannot talk about it. Speaking evil is like murder.” We are taught that speaking badly about someone is akin to killing them. And then comes chilul Hashem. That means “desecration of God’s name.” There are endless theological questions about what it would even mean to “make God look bad,” but the way people use the term and its supposed meaning are not the same. It becomes a pious way of saying, “We cannot make the community look bad.” If anyone finds out that this religious-looking man is abusing children, what will people think? We know what they will think, and it will not be good.

There is also a historical basis to these fears about airing our dirty laundry. In Jewish tradition, we are taught that the Second Temple was destroyed because of sinat chinam—baseless hatred. The classic story is about a man who intended to invite his friend Kamza to a feast but mistakenly invited Bar Kamza, whom he hated. Bar Kamza assumed it was a gesture of reconciliation and showed up. The host publicly humiliated him and expelled him. Bar Kamza, enraged, went to the Roman authorities and slandered the Jewish people. He convinced the Roman governor that the Jews disrespected him. The governor sent a calf to be sacrificed in the Temple; Bar Kamza secretly inflicted a minor blemish on it, making it ritually unfit. The priests refused the sacrifice, not out of disrespect but because Jewish law prohibits offering a blemished animal. This chain of events escalated, and eventually, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple. It is a dramatic story, but the message absorbed culturally is: “Do not go to the secular authorities. That leads to disaster.”

Throughout Jewish history in the diaspora, this warning was not abstract. In many places, going to the authorities could indeed lead to pogroms—Cossacks showing up, killing people, burning homes. Nobody wanted to attract attention to the Jewish community for fear of collective punishment.

But we now have to explain that we are not living in 1840s Europe. We are in Western democracies. Suppose you go to the NYPD to report sexual assault. In that case, you are not risking that tomorrow, non-Jewish citizens will burn down synagogues with official permission. That is not the world we live in today, thankfully. Antisemitism exists, but not at a level that would justify failing to report serious crimes. Crimes harming children must be reported. You cannot allow that to continue.

Yet the fear of airing “dirty laundry,” and especially the fear of going to secular authorities, still echoes. There is even a halachic category historically called mesirah—informing on a Jew to secular authorities. Traditionally, being a moser was considered so serious that, in extreme historical contexts, harming someone to prevent them from informing was permitted because informing could cause an entire Jewish community to be massacred. That is obviously irrelevant to modern Western society.

Suppose you ask whether Jewish law might justify not going to the police to report sexual assault in a place like Iran, where Jews face real state persecution. In that case, I can understand why that would be a complex ethical and halachic question. There is actual risk there. But applying mesirah to the United States, Canada, the UK, Australia—any modern democracy—makes no sense.

Anywhere else in the world—literally anywhere there are Jews—I do not see mesirah as relevant. Maybe you could argue about a place like Iraq, but there is effectively no Jewish community left in Iraq, so it is moot. It is not applicable in Canada. It is not relevant in Australia.

In the Malka Leifer case—another important one we were involved in—when they were discussing extraditing her to Australia, all the rabbis, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, had opinions: “You cannot send her back. It is mesirah. What might they do to her?” What are they going to do? She will be in a jail cell with other women. She will get kosher food. It will not be comfortable for an ultra-Orthodox woman—that is true. She should have thought of that before she raped her students. She is not at risk of being skinned alive or hanged. This is Australia, for heaven’s sake. They are not going to kill all the Jews in the city.

So it is not relevant anymore. Mesirah was a rule for a particular historical context that thankfully does not apply in almost any place today. Yet these are still the excuses offered for why you “cannot” go to the police, why you “cannot”talk about it. We hear them over and over.

I hear mesirah invoked less now than I used to. It used to be popular. In fact, I appear in a documentary that came out about six years ago called Mosrim—”Informers,” or snitches, basically. That is what they used to call us. Professionally, I was “a moser.” I suppose I still am. But the halachic category no longer applies. You do not need to be a rabbi to see that. You need a basic level of common sense.

So those are the primary arguments against addressing abuse. Nobody openly says, “I support abuse.” I have never heard anyone say that. But what they do say is, “If we act—if we go to the police, if we expose this—then it will be the end of the world.” That is the subtext.

Now there is a new buzzword: “restorative justice.” It sounds professional and legitimate—and it is legitimate in particular circumstances. But what happens is that some rabbis learn the phrase and then use it everywhere.

We have a current case: a rabbi who abused his daughter and other children. She is the only one who has gone to the police so far. He is dangerous and belongs in prison. He was in jail and already on trial when the victim received a phone call from a local rabbi who was friends with her uncle. He decided it was appropriate to intervene in the case. He called her to say, “Why not consider a process of restorative justice? I know many people who have done it. It is successful.”

The man is in jail. He has not taken the slightest responsibility. He pleaded not guilty. There is almost no dispute that he did what he is accused of, but he claims he had a right to do it because “she is his daughter” and he “did not mean it sexually.” This is absolutely not a candidate for restorative justice—not even remotely.

They use the term because it is a tool: it sounds professional, carries legitimacy, appears in academic and legal discussions, and crucially, it can mean “no police, no prison.” So it gets thrown at any case where they do not want the victim to go to the authorities: “Try restorative justice.” Whether it is appropriate or not is treated as irrelevant.

There is definitely a trend. Perpetrating rabbis lean on whatever new tactic appears on the menu of plausible deniability. The patterns are remarkably boring and predictable—like watching the same train barrel toward the same blown-out bridge every time.

When something new comes along—restorative justice, for example—the reaction is often, “Perfect.” Then it becomes a tool to evade even minimal accountability.

Earlier in my career, the standard trick was steering victims toward the wrong reporting channel. In our system in Israel, you can report abuse through social services, through the police, or through a hybrid unit staffed by social workers who work directly with the police. They figured out that if you report through social services, there are mechanisms that can slow-roll a case into oblivion, so it never reaches prosecution. So suddenly, everyone was being told, “The best thing is to report to social services.” That statement is technically true—you are allowed to report there—but the purpose was to prevent the abuser from ever being arrested.

New tactic, same goal.

Another pattern keeps showing up. It taps into purity culture and the religious concept of the yetzer hara—the “evil inclination,” including lust, envy, and so on. Sexual abuse is incomprehensible to most people who are not predators. You cannot intuit why someone would do it; it is so far outside normative human experience.

So perpetrators and some rabbis collapse that distinction by reframing predatory behaviour as just another form of everyday temptation. Because Orthodox and especially ultra-Orthodox communities impose stringent prohibitions on masturbation, men often struggle with those rules; it is part of basic human biology. That struggle is universal enough that rabbis and community members relate to it.

What perpetrators do is equate the two struggles: “You deal with inappropriate thoughts about women; I struggle with touching kids. We all have our struggles.”

I hear that line all the time. We all have our struggles.

And then a kind of empathetic fog descends. Rabbis say, “Everyone has a yetzer hara. Everyone struggles with impure thoughts.”

But this collapses a critical distinction. It is normal and healthy for an adult to be attracted to other adults—men or women. Sexual attraction is part of human biology. It needs to be regulated to function in society, of course, but it is normal.

Abusing children is not.

Yet the narrative becomes:

“I cannot judge him. I would not want anyone inside my head, seeing what I think about. So how can I judge what he did?”

I hear this from people more often than you would believe. They do not realize how warped that sounds. It is not the same thing at all.

But that is the narrative. “Everyone messes up. Everyone struggles. He slipped; he will do better.”

It is a way of turning the unthinkable into something forgivable, even relatable, which is precisely why it is so dangerous.

This is not the same thing. I also do not buy the argument that sexual abuse stems from sexual repression. If an adult man wants sex, there are countless ways—legal or otherwise—to find a consenting adult partner. Sexual abuse is not an automatic fallback when someone is “not getting enough.”

A colleague of mine likes to say that claiming sexual abusers offend because they “need sex” is like saying alcoholics drink because they’re thirsty. The metaphor holds. Sexual abuse is not about unmet sexual needs; it is about power and control.

Another common myth, and one that enrages me more than most, is the idea that marriage is some cure. Men who are abusing but unmarried are often told to get married as soon as possible—because once they have an “outlet,” they will supposedly stop. It is not true. Statistically, most sexual abusers in the United States are married. I do not have the precise numbers for Israel, but I have no reason to believe it is dramatically different.

Yet women are pressured into believing this narrative. One of the most chilling conversations I ever had was with a Hasidic woman from a deeply ultra-Orthodox community in Jerusalem. Her husband had sexually abused two of their daughters. She sat across from me and said:

“I did everything he wanted. I did every disgusting thing he asked me to do. Why did he have to go to the girls? I did everything so he wouldn’t go to the girls.”

Her sentence captures the narrative perfectly: the belief that wives are responsible for preventing their husbands from “sinning,” including preventing child sexual abuse. Rabbis reinforce it, and women internalize it. They are told, explicitly or implicitly, that if their husbands abused someone, it is because they did not provide enough sex.

It is false in every possible way.

The idea is profoundly damaging. It infantilizes men by painting them as creatures incapable of self-control. It burdens women with responsibility for the sexual decisions of another human being. And it devastates children by creating an environment in which their safety hinges on the sexual compliance of their mothers. Spiritually, psychologically, emotionally—every level of it is poisonous.

We hear these narratives constantly.

As for accountability, you asked if any rabbi who is a known abuser has taken responsibility, gone to jail, completed a process of genuine healing, and then lived without reoffending. To my knowledge, no. And even if someone did not reoffend, we would have no way to prove it.

I am not aware of a single rabbi who served time and afterward took real accountability. The closest—though it is a grotesque distortion of accountability—was Eliezer Berland, the cult leader. When he pled guilty, he said something like, “If I had done this in the times of the Temple, they would have lashed me.” That was framed as an acknowledgment of his wrongdoing.

His followers immediately reinterpreted it as a holy act, that he was only admitting guilt to “atone for the sins of the generation.” It is a bizarrely Christian idea, totally contrary to Jewish theology. Judaism does not have the concept of one person atoning for another’s sins. But religious communities absorb all sorts of things, especially when needed to protect a leader.

So no—there is no known pattern of accountability, rehabilitation, and non-reoffense among abusive rabbis. Not even close.

Jacobsen: Terminologies from other contemporary religions get absorbed; contemporary religion is syncretic more than anything else. Even those who consider themselves “true to the faith” still overlap here and there. What organizations do you recommend that also work with Orthodox communities—researchers, survivor advocates, or organizations that could be Israeli-based or outside Israel but work with the diaspora Orthodox community?

Aaronson: Our organization is called Magen. We are based in Israel, and we support survivors all over the world, usually when there is some Israel connection—either their abuser has fled to or from Israel, or the survivor moved from or to Israel.

There is Rachel Bayer, director of the Bayer Group. I do not think she markets herself specifically as a Jewish organization, but she is a Modern Orthodox woman and works with many Jewish institutions as well. She was a former sex-crimes prosecutor in New York. Now she runs a company that provides education and prevention training for schools, camps, and institutions in the United States.

There is also Shira Berkovits from Sacred Spaces—definitely worth speaking to.

There is a woman named Shani Verschleiser. She is an LCSW. Her organization is called Magenu. Not to be confused with Magen. There is much variation on that word; magen means “shield” in Hebrew, so you see many versions. Also, there is Asher Lovy at Zaakah. 

Jacobsen: Anyone else? These people seem like “troublemakers.”

Aaronson: To some degree or another, yes. But Shira Berkovits’s organization and Rachel Baer’s work are more proactive—they do educational work. They are not “troublemakers” in their current roles. Their organizations help prevent abuse, which is naturally a lot easier.

Jacobsen: Thank you very much for your time today. It was nice to meet you. I appreciate your expertise. 

Aaronson: Have a lovely day. Take care.

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