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Dirty Poems & Sex Abuse: Two Jewish Educators in Big Trouble |
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 by Tamar Fox, March 17, 2008 |
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David Prashker: drops the F-bomb and gets firedTwo Jewish educators are out of jobs—and one is on the run—due to allegations of molestation and...dirty poems.
The first infraction seems fairly minor: David Prashker, director of the Toronto Leo Baeck Jewish Day School, was all but forced to quit his job in the wake of a scandal involving poetry he wrote decades ago and published on his personal website. Though the poetry has since been removed, the National Post summarizes it:
One poem explored a young man's heady sexual encounter and used the word "f---" several times, another included the verse "the first act of killing is the hardest" and "the second time is remarkably straightforward." It is not clear when the poetry was written--Mr. Prashker's Web site references material that dates back to 1973 -- and it has since been removed from his personal page.
Was Prashker foolish to publish such poetry on his personal website? Arguably, yes. If the poems in question were written years before he entered the school system though, it seems a tad unfair to penalize him. Writing some angsty poetry and dropping the f-bomb in 1973 isn't exactly the kind of thing that should get a man fired in 2008. If anything, it's the poor judgment demonstrated by putting his crude verse on the internet makes him seem like an idiot—not to mention a bad leader for a Jewish (or any) school.
On the opposite end of the spectrum we find Malka Leifer, former principal of an ultra-Orthodox school in inner Melbourne. The wife of a rabbi and mother of eight is being accused of all kinds of craziness, including the allegations that she "shared a bed" with her students, and that she molested girls at school and at camps. Parents also claim that one victim has attempted suicide.
Within 24 hours of being fired from the school, Leifer left Australia for Israel, and some parents seem to think the school paid for her flight.
There are also claims that Mrs. Leifer left Australia with up to $100,000 borrowed from a family within the community, two days before she flew to Israel. She is also alleged to have taken about $20,000 from a pool of money earned from some students' part-time jobs. The money, managed by Mrs. Leifer, was pooled in a community fund and then lent to people in need.
This is hardly the first case of teachers and principals being accused of molestation in Jewish schools. The Awareness Center has a frighteningly long list of similar cases from all around the world.
What’s striking about the gulf between these two stories is that in the case of Prashker it seems clear that a parent was out to get him, and would go to any lengths—including hacking into the school’s computer system—in order to defame the director’s name. In Leifer’s case, the molestation seems to have gone on for many years before girls spoke up, likely because of the stigma associated with sexual abuse in these communities.
The challenge facing the day school community is in creating an environment that's open enough that kids in day schools will come forward if something inappropriate is happening, but principals don’t have to be responsible for bad words (and bad poetry) they wrote decades ago.
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tarfon
Coming and going
How about the Catch-22 last paragraph in the article: "The Australian Jewish News also reported that on Saturday
last week, Rabbi Beck addressed the community and said they should
not consider Mrs Leifer guilty of any crimes because there had been
no investigation. He told the congregation that if they discussed
the matter, it would be considered lashon hara (malicious gossip),
the paper reported."
Rachel76
The UNawareness Cancer...
"The Awareness Center" is a totally bogus site run by a woman named Vicki Polin who was on Oprah's show back in the 80's saying that her family were members of a cult that sacrificed babies and ate them or something....PUH-lease....she takes away from the valid accusations of abuse and makes a mockery out of them. Aside from the fact that most Rabbanim have totally pulled away from her and no longer support her or her site, she has made many many enemies by her fraudulent fundraising that never actually helps anyone but her, as well as defamed people with no verifiable sources. She is proof that anyone can say anything on the internet with no way of verifying information and literally destroy peoples lives. If she were really trying to do a community service, why does she have dead rabbis (who therefore aren't really a THREAT) suce as Shlomo Carlebach and Jacob Frank on there? Duh.
Rachel76
Vicki Polin....
http://www.erichufschmid.net/TFC/Video-PhilosophyOfZionismAndIsrael.html
5) Jewish woman says murder rituals still occur
telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/08/wjews08.xml
The Wikipedia summary of this professor:
wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_Toaff
A Jewish woman in Chicago, Vicki Polin, claimed on the Oprah television show in 1989 that murder rituals still occur in her family! Video at this page (4 minutes):
usajewish.com/downloads/vicki-devil-worship.HTML
If that link fails, a direct link to the video is here:
vicki-devil-worship.wmv
Here is the audio only (for those of you who have trouble playing the video, such as people with Macintosh computers):
Vicki-Polin-on-Oprah.mp3
After watching that video, you might enjoy this page:
judicial-inc.biz/Grimes.htm
Hellmut Schramm wrote a book on this issue in 1941: jrbooksonline.com/schramm/schramm.htm
dmt
So...
Rachel76 - You're linking to blood libel websites?!? Seriously?
Anyway, I'll take your word about Polin and that she manages the website. So what? If the cases she's presenting on her website are legitimate, it doesn't really matter who's running it. If there are any false accusations on the page, then by all means, expose them. Otherwise it's just an ad-hominem attack.
Aharon Varady
If only more Jews would
If only more Jews would publish their bad poetry on the Internet, and worry less about how their community might ostracize or censor them, perhaps we'd have healthier communities comprised of individuals that relish in creative expression and artistic sharing. Having your old poetry with, heaven forfend, abrasive language, available on the Internet doesn't make you an idiot or a bad leader -- it makes you more recognizably human and interesting -- especially if it's good poetry. Shame on Leo Baeck Jewish Day School.
Yaakov
Vicki Polin
Tmara,
You may want to rethink the cite to The Awareness Center. There are surely many more credible sources for the same point.
There is more on Vicki Polin at http://www.lukeford.net/profiles/profiles/vicki_polin.htm
http://www.usajewish.com/archive/CONSUMER_ALERT.htm
I don't know whether these stories are accurate, but they do raise a red flag. I believe Luke Ford has posted on Jewcy before. You might ask him to respond to these issues. I'm surely not the only one confused and troubled by the reporting.
Thanks
Yaakov
questionable reporting
" If the cases she's presenting on her website are legitimate, it doesn't really matter who's running it. If there are any false accusations on the page, then by all means, expose them. Otherwise it's just an ad-hominem attack"
The problem appears to be that the site includes legitimate cases and annonymous and potentilaly erroneous cases. The stories about the site raise concerns and there are better, more reputable sources out there.
The Washington Jewish Week noted:
"Among those who were formerly listed but resigned for other reasons is Rabbi Mark Dratch, who chairs the Rabbinical Council of America's Task Force on Rabbinic Improprieties and has founded the organization JSafe to deal with sexual abuse in the Jewish community.
Dratch said he left the Awareness Center board in "disagreement with [Polin] on the standards required for publishing on her Web site. I wasn't satisfied with the threshold of verification. There are people who've been victimized and others who've been subject to false reports also being victimized. The big problem we have in this area is verifying the allegations and moving forward."
Simpleliquid
Tasty Siblings
I'm Jewish. I used to have five brothers but I ate four of them. I now have one brother but I'm planning on eating him soon. I also have information regarding sexual abuse in synagogues and jewish dayschools throughout the country. I'm going to post all the details on my website.
Ashmodai
Parents, keep your daughters from Jacob Frank!
Oh my God...Polin actually lists the long-dead Jacob Frank on her site? That is hilarious, and anomalous as well. Unlike your garden-variety sexual molester in a position of authority, Frank didn't see the need to keep his or his followers' perverted acts a secret. Far from it; he proudly acknowledged them as necessary "descents into sin" for the purpose of bringing redemption. And yeah, in any case he's hardly an urgent threat to the safety of our children.
On a more somber note, Polin's site closely resembles certain anti-Semitic sites I came across, a few years back, which catalogued every case they could find of a rabbi, cantor, educator or other Jewish professional convicted or forced to resign because of sexual offences, as "proof" that Jews are sickos. (And which conveniently left out the just-as-common instances of sexual abuse by non-Jews, religious/communal leaders or otherwise.) No, I'm not going to link to those sites, if indeed any of them still operate at this time. But the Awareness Center's close similarity to those sites makes me wonder, is Polin "merely" insane, or a particularly odd example of--I hate to use this term because it's bandied about so indiscriminately--Jewish self-hatred?
Ismail
I'm not sure why Rachel76
I'm not sure why Rachel76 lumps together Vicki Polin with Toaff. The latter produced a book which purports to demonstrate that the blood libel-i.e., that Jews murder Christians and use their blood in rituals-is in part based on actual historical events (incidentally, the Wiki link Rachel provided suggests he has retracted this claim). He has rightly been pilloried by historians who've demonstrated that his knowledge and methods are entirely insufficient and in no way support his conclusions.
Polin, on the other hand, appears to be a pathetic individual who is committed to notions of memory formation and retrieval, common to all ritual abuse crusaders, that have no support among cognitive scientists and who thinks she suffers from MPD, an almost certainly fictional and iatrogenic malady. She appears indistinguishable from those deluded Christians who've claimed that their pastors or congregations don cloaks and summon Martian robots who then dine upon their children.
Unlike Toaff, whose claims about crimes by Jews against Christians resonate with long-standing anti-Semitic delusions, Polin restricts herself to supposed crimes within the Jewish community.
As do all such advocates, she surely overestimates the incidence of abuse, and her ancillary embroidery (devil worship, et al) are the sad evidence of an overburdened mind.
It's regrettable that we live among racists who happily pounce upon claims like Ms. Polin's to buttress their lunacies, but this shouldn't matter.
Denounce Polin for her bad science, pity her for stunted development, but don't criticize her because assholes delight in her ramblings. And don't equate her pitiful efforts to put her disorganized internal world aright with a faux-historian's shabby attempt to rehabilitate a calumny.
ravads
Awareness Center
Unfortunately, the Awareness Center has taken an important issue and trivialized it by including some "offenders" who had clearly been proven innocent of allegations against them. While the "center" might believe that "where there's smoke there's fire," neither American nor Jewish law agree. When you have innocent people listed on such a site, it detracts from the credibility of the site when it does actually identify others who are pedophiles.
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