Gość: Ha'aretz
IP: 168.103.126.*
10.05.02, 18:39
Sodo-y in the synagogue
From a report published in the Hebrew language Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz
"...for many years, (Talmud scribe) Yaakov Yitzhak Brizel...sodo-ized ultra-
Orthodox boys. The greatest rabbis knew - and did nothing...
"At the age of 11, Moisheleh, the strongest fellow in the talmud torah (school
for ultra-Orthodox boys), went up to Shaiya Brizel and said to him: 'Kid, I
want you know that your father is not the holy man you think he is. He is a
hom.' ...Brizel was a scion of the Brizel family, which founded ...the
mysterious organization that imposes moral order on the ultra-Orthodox ghetto...
"Had the father, Yaakov Yitzhak Brizel ...contented himself with homoseksual
relations with adults, it is reasonable to suppose that we would never have
heard his son's story.
"However, in his book, The Silence of the Ultra-Orthodox, published a few weeks
ago, the son claims that for decades his father ...sodo-ized yeshiva students.
He committed the act in empty synagogues during the hours between prayers and
in other places.
"The greatest of the ultra-Orthodox rabbis...like Rabbi Landau and the halachic
sage Shmuel Halevi Hausner of Bnei Brak, knew and kept silent. The father was a
Hasid heart and soul, and went to a number of rebbes.... the twin brother of
the rebbe from Rehovot, the Rebbe of Kretschnif in Kiryat Gat, was happy to
accept the father among his followers. Ultimately, claims Brizel, it was not
easy for the Rebbe from Kiryat Gat to be picky when he could win such a
respected adherent.
"...The proud father with the look of an honored rebbe, who observed all the
commandments from the slightest to the most important, used to pray at a
certain yeshiva with the young boys. There, claims Shaiya Brizel, he hunted his
victims. When the head of the yeshiva discovered the true reason that the
respected Torah scribe was praying fervently at his yeshiva, he did not contact
the police...
"Before the publication of his book, Shaiya Brizel met with the yeshiva
head. 'You are right that we covered up for him,' admitted the man. 'I and a
few other rabbis...I was busy trying to calm things down and hushing up the
affair so that it would not get publicized.'
"(The son) published the book using real names. His entire family and almost
all the rabbis appear under their own names. Only the names of some of the
localities and the head of the yeshiva are disguised. To protect himself from a
legal point of view, Brizel held a series of conversations with members of his
family and rabbis, in which he demanded explanations of why they had covered up
for his father's misbehavior. He secretly recorded all these conversations,
even with his mother.
"If I had written without the names it would have been fiction and this
certainly did not suit me," he explained. 'I wanted things to change, for ultra-
Orthodox society to know that it can attempt to hide things and be hidden, but
even if it takes 30 years, a Golem will always rise up against its creator and
reveal everything. In this case, I was the Golem.'
"When Rachel Brizel, the daughter of a good Bnei Brak family, married an
arranged match from the glorious Brizel family, she had no idea that she was
destroying her own life. After six months, she caught her husband having seks
with another man. In that case, at least it was with an adult.
"Shaiya Brizel relates that some of the boys with whom his father had relations
sent letters of complaint to their own fathers; in the discreet ultra-Orthodox
society they had no one else to whom they could complain.
Shaiya Brizel: author of a book telling of sodo-y in the synagogue
"When she read these letters, my mother went out of her mind,' writes
Brizel. 'Every such letter made her want to demand a divorce. Again and again
batteries of mediators, the Brizel rabbis, would show up, whose job it was to
calm her down so that, heaven forbid, she would not destroy the good name of
the Brizel family.
"They could live with the fact that one of their own had ra-ed minors, but for
them divorce was an impossible situation.'
"...Twice, once during prayers in a synagogue, and once during a Gemara
(Talmud) study hour at Rabbi Eliezer Shach's Ponevezh Yeshiva, ultra-Orthodox
men who were strangers to him touched his seksual organ, presumably on the
assumption that he followed in his father's footsteps. The first time, he made
a fuss, only to discover that the only thing that interested the people there
was to hush the whole thing up. The second time, he made do with a whispered
warning to the man.
"Shaiya Brizel is now 36 and the father of three; he works as an accountant.
"His father, 65, was forced to leave home several years ago and return to his
elderly parents' apartment. Shaiya wrote this book after a suicide attempt in
June.
'For all those years I was half dead. For the past five years I have been
getting psychological treatment. During my talks with the psychologist I
decided that I was going to spew out all this ugliness in the form of a book.'
"He took into account that there would be violent reactions to the book...which
only came out a few weeks ago...Brizel suffers from a serious heart defect,
which could cause his death. As a way of protecting himself, he has deposited a
letter with three lawyers that contains serious allegations about the Eda
Haredit, and he has informed the relevant people.
"Recently, he has moved to a new apartment, and he lives in the National
Religious sector of a mixed community of National Religious and ultra-Orthodox
families. Naturally, he started praying at the only Hasidic synagogue in the
settlement. After the book came out, associates of the local rebbe (rabbi)
informed him that he was persona non grata.
"Ironically, this same rebbe had come to the area after being compelled to
leave several other communities on suspicion of having sodo-ized his pupils. In
ultra-Orthodox society, revealing that acts of sodomy have been committed is a
far graver offense than committing them.
"On the day the book was published, Brizel met with the head of the Hachemei
Lublin Yeshiva, Rabbi Avraham Vazner. 'He told me that publishing the book was
a million times worse than what my father had done...'
"Ha'aretz has been unable to obtain a response from Rabbi Yaakov Yitzhak
Brizel. At his parents' home, a woman replied: "We don't care. Shaiya is a liar
and there is nothing more to be said."
"Ha'aretz also requested the Brizels' response through the Eda Haredit activist
Yehuda Meshi- Zahav. By the time the article went to press, there was no
response through this channel either.
