There has been considerable consternation about
the recent New York Times front page expose of how child sex abuse cases are
handled in Ultra Orthodox communities. Although this scandal has been
discussed for years in the Jewish media, many were shocked to read how informants
are routinely shunned and victims banned from reporting abuse to the
authorities. Anti-Semitic websites have
had a field day, comparing this
Jewish “code of silence” to the Mafia’s.
The Times article correctly pinpoints an obscure rabbinic
prohibition as a major source of the problem:
“While some ultra-Orthodox rabbis now argue that a child molester should be reported to the police, others strictly adhere to an ancient prohibition against mesirah, the turning in of a Jew to non-Jewish authorities, and consider publicly airing allegations against fellow Jews to be chillul Hashem, a desecration of God’s name.”
It is important to emphasize that most rabbinic
authorities concur that Judaism has no place for the protection of sexual predators. Even for those who might otherwise support mesirah,
the prohibition does not apply when there is a perceived public menace. As Rabbi Moses Isserles states in his gloss
to the Shulchan
Arukh, “A person who attacks others should be punished. If the Jewish authorities
do not have the power to punish him, he must be punished by the civil
authorities.”
While unfortunately there is still considerable
resistance in reporting dangerous behavior to secular authorities in the ultra Orthodox
rabbinic world, the problem is less mesirah itself than how these rabbis
choose to apply it. Mesirah is a dangerous tool, but, to
paraphrase the NRA, mesirah doesn’t harm people – people do, in this
case insular and misinformed Jewish leaders.
That said, when you read Maimonides’ full explanation of mesirah,
it gives one pause to wonder whether the time has come to eliminate it
completely from the halachic lexicon.
Maimonides, after all, was neither insular nor misinformed, and he lived
in a society that was relatively benign toward Jews. Yet he writes:
“It is forbidden to hand over a Jew to the heathen, neither his person nor his goods, even if he is wicked and a sinner, even if he causes distress and pain to fellow-Jews. Whoever hands over a Jew to the heathen has no part in the next world. It is permitted to kill a moser wherever he is. It is even permitted to kill him before he has handed over (a fellow Jew)… (Mishneh Torah, Torts 8, 9-11).”
Maimonides’ condemnation of the moser is
reminiscent of the law regarding the rodef
(the life threatening pursuer), whom one is also allowed to kill – this
rabbinic concept was employed most infamously by those defending the murder of
Prime Minister Rabin. The moser
and rodef are linked in a commentary by Rebbenu Asher:
“Thus, an informer is like a pursuer to kill someone and the victim may be saved at the cost of the life of the pursued.”
OK. This is not a
world most of us are living in. We’re
talking about a case where the molester is clearly the pursuer, not the guy who
calls 911. It is the cover up that
shames the entire Jewish community, not the informant. In a free society with just courts and equal
treatment under the law, mesirah is a relic, a nice conversation piece
from a more perilous past, like that section of the Haggadah where we ask God
to pour out divine wrath against our enemies.
The idea that Jews should be protective of Jewish sinners
stems from a longstanding mistrust of just about every government we’ve lived
under. The most obvious example was the
Romans, who were not the most benevolent to their Jewish subjects. The rabbis
had Rome in mind when they advised their students, “Love work, despise
positions of power and do not become overly familiar with the government.” But protecting Jews from secular authorities
has extended to almost absurd extremes.
The principle of mesirah is has been used to dissuade Jewish
auditors from reporting other Jews to the IRS for tax fraud and, as Rabbi Moshe Feinstein ruled,
to prohibit us from turning a Jew in to secular authorities for fraudulent
kashrut supervision. I for one am glad the Agriprocessors
scandal was handled by the government and not kept “within the family.”
It all goes back to Moses. When he struck the Egyptian
taskmaster, Exodus tells us that fellow Israelites began taunting him about the
incident, which led Moses to become fearful that someone would turn him over to
Pharaoh. Rashi posits that Moses wasn’t so
much concerned about his own fate; he was concerned that his act would lead
“villains and informers” to turn him in, making them unworthy of
redemption. So he fled, not so much to
protect himself as to protect his accusers from suffering the fate of the moser.
But change “Pharaoh” to “NYPD” or “FBI,” and the story
reads quite differently. If Moses had struck a cop not in Egypt but
Brooklyn, wouldn’t it have been absolutely appropriate for a fellow Jew to
notify the authorities? But replace “NYPD” with “Sheriff Clark,” and
would you turn in Moses for striking a cop who was assaulting peaceful
protesters in Selma? Wouldn’t you want
your moral code to protect him, despite the unintended death?
Yes, I know that one person’s freedom fighter is another
person’s terrorist, but I can stand behind an objective moral standard that
says that Moses was right, a child molester is wrong, and Pharoah and the NYPD
are not created equal.
In any event, we can both protect Moses and turn in the
molester for lots of reasons, but in each case, the least relevant factor is that
the perpetrator is mishpoche.
That’s mesirah’s fatal flaw.
It’s time to declaw this dangerous concept, so that may
never again be used to justify the protection of those who inflict suffering on
innocent children.
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