A disgraced children's author exposed cracks in how Orthodox community confronts sexual abuse

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Largest archive of pre-War Jewish life gets digitized, the farmer who rescues refugees, remembering Peter Bogdanovich and the Olympic cousins you need to know about.

OUR LEAD STORY

Rebbetzin Tziporah Heller seemed to downplay the alleged victims’ trauma.

Chaim Walder, a popular Orthodox children’s book author, committed suicide last week, just as new revelations surfaced alleging his years of sexual abuse. After Walder’s death, some in the community continued to champion his work, leading one of his victims to also kill herself. Today, we have two new stories about Walder and one from 2017 about the false notion that religiosity can be a shield from sexual abuse.

A revered rebbetzin publicly blamed the journalist who exposed the crimes. She incited wrath from her followers:Tziporah Heller, who has taught at a Jerusalem women’s seminary for decades, praised Walder’s books in a Facebook post this week that seemed to downplay his abuse, prompting more than 700 comments. “With women like you saying these things, sexual predators will forever roam free in the community,” read one. “Now you, too, have blood on your hands,” read another, “as an enabler and victim-blamer in this case.” Read the story ➤

Opinion | Too many chose to look away from Chaim Walder’s crimes. We can make other choices now:Suppressing information about sexual abuse in the Jewish community by invoking the dangers of slander or false allegation is the wrong approach,writes Rachel Bayar, a former sex-crimes and child-abuse prosecutor. “If a parent’s first reaction to these reports is ‘innocent until proven guilty,’ or that ‘Walder’s books did so much good in the world,’ their children – whether they have witnessed abuse, experienced abuse, or just want to understand more about it – are unlikely to come forward.” Read the OpEd ➤

Opinion | Stop pretending modesty can prevent sexual assault: What if there were a simple set of rules that could relegate sexual assault to the dark ages? It’s something many religious writers, including those who adhere to Jewish Orthodoxy, Islam and Christianity, seem to believe. “If only it were so simple,” our Opinion Editor Laura E. Adkins wrote in 2017. “A full quarter of married women who have been ultra-Orthodox from birth report having been sexually abused. If women who dress in thick stockings, long dark skirts and prudish wigs, who refrain from even shaking the hands of men who aren’t their spouse or their close relative, are not immune to sexual assault, then none of us are.” Rather than providing protection to women who follow the rules, she added, religiosity more often “shelters those who perpetrate the worst abuses of others.” Read the OpEd ➤

ALSO FROM THE FORWARD

Archive of ‘largest single remnant of Jewish life’ in Europe now available online:YIVO, the Institute for Jewish Research, has reunited, preserved and digitized its pre-World War II papers, the culmination of a seven-year, $7 million project. The collection of about 1.5 million pages includes working drafts by Hasidic philosopher Martin Buber; letters from Albert Einstein to Yiddish writers and actors; a diary of a young Theodor Herzl; business papers of the Rothschilds; and songs, medical records and case files on families looking to convert to Russian Orthodoxy. “We have Yiddish pornography, and we’ve gotten the sermons of Rabbi Schneerson,” said YIVO’s Jonathan Brent. “That’s a people, that’s a civilization.”Read the story ➤

How one far-right platform has weaponized antisemitism and Christian extremism to foment insurrection: Gab, a social media and news ecosystem, has long been a home for far-right extremists and hate speech of all stripes. But our digital culture reporter, Mira Fox, noticed something else: the way the site relies on Christianity to justify its content – including blatantly antisemitic beliefs. “Understanding the way the site leverages Christianity is essential to understanding its appeal,” she writes. Read the story ➤

But wait there’s more..

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

🐐 He served in the Israeli air force and made a fortune reshaping the car rental business. Now he’s a farmer living in New Jersey – and, in his spare time, masterminds rescue missions to save refugees around the world. Meet Moti Kahana, pictured above. “I always need challenges and problems in order to solve them to keep myself entertained,” he explained. (Plus 61J Media)

🎙️ The BBC has demanded that victims of an antisemitic attack last month reveal their identities before the network responds to their complaints about its report on the incident. Lawyers contest the news organization’s claim that one of the teenagers attacked on a bus during Hanukkah had said “dirty Muslims;” some experts who have analyzed video of the incident say they were actually calling for help in Hebrew. The victims claim the BBC report was discriminatory and are demanding an apology. In a letter, the BBC replied: “We will be unable to substantively further progress your legal complaint until you identify your clients.” (Jewish Chronicle)

🏠 After cooling off early in the pandemic, Israel’s housing market has “kept up its momentum,” according to one Tel Aviv broker, thanks to surging demand and short supply. Couple that with the city recently being named the world’s most expensive to live in, and people are looking for alternatives. One option? A new 71-acre gated community called Irus, located just outside Tel Aviv “People are much more afraid of the next lockdown,” said a Jerusalem broker. “They want space, a balcony, a garden.” (New York Times)

🐜 Plant and insect species are often named to honor important people of the era in which they’re discovered, but some botanists want to change that. One reason: There’s a beetle named after Adolf Hitler that is being pushed to the brink of extinction by Nazi memorabilia enthusiasts. (The Conversation)

Shiva call ➤ Peter Bogdanovich, the bandana-throated, Oscar-nominated director-writer and a bridge figure between New Hollywood and the Hollywood Golden Age has died at 82. “There are no ‘old’ movies really,” Bogdanovich once said, “only movies you have already seen and ones you haven’t.” Read an appreciation by our PJ Grisar ➤

Another shiva call ➤ Joan Copeland, an actress and sister of playwright Arthur Miller, died at 99. “From the time I was a little girl I had the stage bug,” Copeland told The New York Times in 1981. “It was like a big dream, like kids who want to fly to the moon today. Perhaps I was unconsciously influenced by my brother. He had made it.”

Long weekend reads ➤Painting outside the lines: Israel’s ultra-Orthodox women take their quiet revolution to art school … The complex world of radical Jewish “revenge theologian,” Meir Kahane … How two Babylonian sages started the collective conversation that became the Talmud.

FROM OUR ARCHIVES

Here’s an ad that ran in a 1926 edition of our newspaper for a play called “Jennie Running for Mayor” (timely and apropos considering New York’s new mayor started this week). It boasted the “biggest musical comedy with one hundred laughs a minute” and starred Bessie Thomashefsky, a Yiddish theater actress.

“Judging from her memoirs, she had the comedy stylings of a Lucille Ball or a Gilda Radner,” said Chana Pollack, the Forward’s archivist. Thomashefsky achieved contemporary renown through a play by her grandson, Michael Tilson Thomas, about his mishpokhe’s Yiddish theater roots.

ON THE CALENDAR

On this day in history: Gustav Flatow, a gymnast who won two gold medals at the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens, was born on Jan. 7, 1875. Flatow, who also competed in the 1900 Games in Paris, and his cousin Alfred – also a gold medal-winning Olympic gymnast – were later murdered in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. In 1996, they were honored by Germany with a postage stamp bearing their photo, and the renaming of a street – Flatow Avenue – near the Olympic stadium. Both were also posthumously inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.

Last year on this day, we reported that rabbis in Washington, D.C. rushed to calm their congregants on edge a day after the violent insurrection at the Capitol.

In honor of National Bobblehead Day, check out 14 of our favorite Jewish bobbleheads.

YOUR WEEKEND READS

The first seven days of 2022 are now in the history books. Treat yourself to some relaxing time with our free magazine. In this week’s issue, you’ll find stories about: a Jewish gangster who inspired Humphrey Bogart, the arrival of premium Israeli whisky, and a counterintuitive take on the antisemitism of Harry Potter’s goblins. Get your copy here ➤

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Thanks to Laura E. Adkins for contributing to today’s newsletter.
You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com.

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