Monday, July 27, 2009

Rabbi Corruption Breeds Despair Beyond Repair






"Look at that Jew. And he's a rabbi too." Jew hater pointing the finger at who else but at the Jews, after news broke of another scandal involving God's chosen people.

The Rabbinate still has its fair share of kiddie sex scandals they still haven't managed or desired to fix. Add to that this massive money laundering scheme and it spells T-R-O-U-B-L-E. Why would an 'at-risk' kid or a Jew on the fringes of holding on want to stay religious? If the leaders don't lead by example, how do they expect to produce honest and decent hard working folks that will follow in their footsteps?
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8165607.stm

US corruption probe nets dozens

More than 40 people, including politicians, officials and several rabbis have been arrested in a major FBI operation in the US.

Three hundred agents raided dozens of locations in New Jersey and New York as part of a 10-year probe into corruption and money laundering.

Three mayors from the state of New Jersey and two members of the state legislature were among those held.

One man is accused of kidney trafficking involving Israeli donors.

Prosecutors say the arrests were part of a "dual-tracked" investigation.

Acting US Attorney Ralph Marra told reporters there were 29 suspects on what he termed the "public corruption" side of the investigation, including the politicians.

On the other side, he said, there were 15 suspects in connection with alleged international money-laundering, including the rabbis and their "associates".

Prosecutors accuse one man of dealing in human kidneys from Israeli donors for transplant for a decade.

It is alleged that "vulnerable people" would give up a kidney for $10,000 (£6,000) and these would then be sold on for $160,000 (£97,000).

Informant

Officials say investigations originally focused on a network they allege laundered tens of millions of dollars through charities controlled by rabbis in New Jersey and neighbouring New York.

ARRESTED

· Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano

· Secaucus Mayor Dennis Elwell

· Jersey City Deputy Mayor Leona Beldini

· Ridgefield Mayor Anthony Suarez

· State legislator Harvey Smith

· State legislator Daniel Van Pelt

· Rabbi Eliahu Ben Haim, Deal, NJ

· Rabbi Saul Kassin, Brooklyn, NY

· Rabbi Edmund Nahum, Deal, NJ

· Rabbi Mordechai Fish, Brooklyn, NY

Investigators used an informant to approach a group of rabbis from the Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn and the New Jersey borough of Deal for help hiding his assets.

The rabbis cashed cheques he made out to charities they oversaw and paid the money back to him, minus a cut, investigators say.

The probe then widened to include alleged official corruption with links to a New Jersey construction boom.

The informant was introduced to a series of politicians and powerful local officials. Posing as a developer, he offered bribes in return for favourable treatment.

State legislators Harvey Smith and Daniel Van Pelt were arrested, as well as the mayors of some of the state's major cities and boroughs.

A number of city building, planning and fire inspectors were also held.

Mr Marra said: "It seemed that everyone wanted a piece of the action. The corruption was widespread and pervasive. Corruption was a way of life for the accused."

He said politicians had "willingly put themselves up for sale" and clergymen had "cloaked their extensive criminal activity behind a facade of rectitude".

'Misunderstanding'

The BBC's Jane O'Brien says the money laundering ring reportedly spanned the US, Israel and Switzerland.

Jon Corzine, the Governor of New Jersey, said: "The scale of corruption we're seeing as this unfolds is simply outrageous and cannot be tolerated."

Ed Kahrer, an FBI agent who has worked on the investigation from the start, said: "New Jersey's corruption problem is one of the worst, if not the worst, in the nation.

"It has become ingrained in New Jersey's political culture," he said.

Another FBI agent said: "The list of people we arrested sounds like it should be the roster for a meeting of community leaders, but sadly they weren't meeting in a boardroom this morning, they were in the FBI booking room."

Most of those arrested have been released on bail.

Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano was accused of taking a bribe. His lawyer said he intended to fight the charge "with all his strength until he proves his innocence".

A lawyer for 87-year-old Rabbi Saul Kassin of Brooklyn said it was a shame his client had been "caught up in this misunderstanding".

Correspondents say the number of people arrested is large even by New Jersey standards, where more than 130 public officials have either admitted to corruption or been found guilty of it since 2001.

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http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/health/2009/july/Rabbi-Arrested-for-Selling-Kidneys.html


Rabbi Arrested for Selling Kidneys; Should It Be Legal?

July 27, 2009 02:00 PM

by Denis Cummings

The arrest in the New Jersey corruption case of a rabbi who brokered the sale of kidneys has renewed a debate over whether the buying and selling of organs should be legalized.

Kidney-Selling Rabbi Arrested by FBI

Brooklyn Rabbi Levy Izhak Rosenbaum was arrested by FBI agents on July 23 for allegedly serving as a broker in the sale of kidneys. According to the charges against him, Rosenbaum would bring donors from Israel to the U.S., where they would have a kidney removed and be paid $10,000. He would then sell the kidney for as much as $160,000.

“If true,” The Associated Press reported, “it would be the first documented case of organ trafficking in the U.S.

The buying and selling of organs in the United States is banned under the 1984 National Organ Transplant Act, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $50,000 fine. Only one country, Iran, allows organs to be sold, but there is an active international black market that accounts for 5-10 percent of all kidney transplants, according to the World Health Organization.

In the U.S., hospitals perform interviews with donors and recipients to ensure that there is no payment involved, explains Time’s Claire Suddath and Alex Altman, so “it's difficult to hoodwink a doctor into believing that a fraudulent organ donor's motives are purely altruistic.” However, AP reports that Rosenbaum appeared “to have a thorough knowledge of the ins and outs” of the system and used bribes when needed.

The kidney black market is made possible by a shortage of kidneys in the U.S. and internationally. Some have called for the selling of organs to be made legal to encourage donations and fulfill demand, but medical organizations are united in their opposition to it.

Congress is also opposed to it, but Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., is circulating a bill, the Organ Trafficking Prohibition Act of 2009, that would allow states to compensate donors through programs that do not involve cash payments. For example, a donor could have their funeral expenses paid.

Background: Kidney shortage in the U.S.

There are more than 80,000 people in the U.S. on the United Network for Organ Sharing/Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network kidney transplant waiting list. Little more than 13,000 kidneys are donated—either by living or deceased donors—each year, not nearly enough to provide kidneys for all those on the list.

Last year, 16,517 people received kidney transplants, while 4,530 people died, though 1,600 of them were too sick to receive a possible transplant.

Opinion & Analysis: Legalizing the sale of organs

Sources in this Story

Dr. Sally Satel, editor of “When Altruism Isn’t Enough: The Case for Compensating Kidney Donors” and herself a kidney recipient, wrote in The Wall Street Journal that the Rosenbaum case illustrates the need for a legal, regulated kidney market.

“When I needed a kidney several years ago and had no donor in sight, I would have considered doing business with someone like Mr. Rosenbaum,” she writes.

Advocates of legal organ selling say that a financial incentive would increase the number of organ donations by healthy individuals or the families of the deceased. Writing in a 2005 edition of Kidney International, Drs. Eli and Amy Friedman say that as many as 100,000 people could be saved annually by introducing a regulated kidney market.

“Introducing appropriate legalization to regulate and manage kidney sales through a national regulatory body would be a ‘natural’ extension of the present end stage renal disease network collaborating with United Network for Organ Sharing and the OPTN,” they write. “Eliminating black market brokers would divert funds to kidney sellers. Money saved by decreasing the number of dialysis patients might fund additional kidney transplants.”

However, many object to an organ market because it would exploit the poor. “Even in a regulated, government-run version of transplant tourism, ‘unethical realities’ lead to exploitation of the poor and the vulnerable,” argued
Harvard Medical School professor Francis L. Delmonico at a 2008 Harvard symposium on the issue.

Virginia Postrel, who donated her kidney to Dr. Satel, wrote in The Atlantic, “A well-designed system could address the concerns about donor welfare by including educational programs, waiting periods, and follow-up care for donors, and possibly by allocating the payments over time rather than offering immediate cash.”

Harvard ethicist Nir Eyal said at the sympsosium that selling an organ has a stigmatizing effect and causes “dignitary harm” to the donor and the impoversihed communities from which the majority of donors would come. He suggests that a form of compensation more subtle than cash payments or “gifts,” such as paired exchanges or benefits like health insurance and funeral costs, would lessen the stigma.
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New York Daily News

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/07/26/2009-07-26_rogue_kidney_brokers_resell_organs_fetched_from_poorest_nations_on_black_market.html

Rogue kidney brokers resell organs from poorest nations on black market

Sunday, July 26th 2009, 4:00 AM

The international black market for kidneys — preying on the desperate and run by a shadowy network of greedy organ brokers — is flourishing, a Daily News probe found.

The arrest of a Brooklyn man Thursday on organ trafficking charges sheds a new spotlight on an underground business where wretchedly poor foreigners — particularly in India — are paid $2,000 to $10,000 for kidneys.

Those kidneys are ultimately sold for as much as $180,000 to transplant recipients who otherwise could die.

More than 80,000 Americans were waiting for kidney transplants as of last week, the United Network for Organ Sharing said.

The wait for a suitable legitimate donor is as long as three years, which drives many to the underground market, experts said.

Lungs for transplant are also available on the black market, but the vast majority of the organs in play are kidneys, they said.

The majority of the black market kidneys are transplanted in hospitals and clinics overseas, but some have been done in New York, apparently without the knowledge of hospital officials, medical ethicists and the leading expert in the black market say.

“In India, China, Africa and Latin America the poor are selling their kidneys to wealthy buyers through an underground set of networks,” said Dr. Steven Post, professor of Bioethics at Stony Brook University.

Transplant recipients generally travel to those countries for their operations, he said.

“The donors make enough money to buy a house or put their kids through college and the doctors do the transplants overseas, in India for example, at perfectly legitimate hospitals, where nobody cares about the buying and selling of organs,” he said.

A previous News investigation into organ trafficking disclosed that one link in the underground network was smuggling live donors into the United States from Moldovia, one of the poorest countries in the former Soviet Union.

The donors entered the United States — generally at Kennedy Airport — on false student or tourist visas and were whisked to hospitals, where their organs were removed and given to recipients, government sources said.

The man arrested Thursday — part of a massive FBI probe of money laundering and bribery that brought down 44 people, including prominent New Jersey politicians — is also accused of arranging for organ transplants inside the United States.

“The price with what we are asking here is $150,000,” Levy Izhak Rosenbaum told an undercover federal agent, prosecutors said in a criminal complaint.
Rosenbaum was referring to the base price for a black market kidney for the agent’s fictitious uncle.

Rosenbaum told the undercover agent he has been an organ broker for 10 years and that his latest deal with a successful transplant in the United States had taken place two weeks earlier.

The cost, later upped to $160,000, would cover finding a suitable kidney donor in Israel, including blood samples to insure a match, payment to the donor, and travel expenses to get the donor to the U.S.

A down payment was made, but there were no discussions as to the hospital where the transplant would take place, and Rosenbaum was arrested before things went further.

Rosenbaum was a middleman in a “kidney mafia” that includes doctors in Israel, a worldwide network of organ hunters, and brokers who match patients and donors with doctors who do the transplants, said Nancy Schepper-Hughes, founder of Organ Watch, which investigates trafficking.

She said the network is headed by criminal businessmen — “think of them as the Madoffs of kidney scams” — who use money raised through bogus charities to pay doctors to perform the transplants.

Rosenbaum worked through doctors at a major medical center outside Tel Aviv, whose patients were given a choice of where to have the operation, said Schepper-Hughes, who said she has been investigating his operation for 10 years.

She said illicit transplants are relatively rare in the U.S. but that Rosenbaum “was the man to go to in New York.”

One Israeli who received a kidney transplant through Rosenbaum described the rabbi to Schepper-Hughes as “very Orthodox but jolly and very off-color. He loved to tell dirty jokes.”

She said the patient told her Rosenbaum was unable to arrange a transplant for him at a New York Hospital but set one up at a Philadelphia hospital.

Schepper-Hughes described the underground organ network as a pyramid with at least three countries involved in every transaction.

“The illegal enterprise is centered in Israel,” she said. “Donors are found in poor countries like Moldovia, Romania, China, all over. Operations are conducted in several countries. For a long time the main place was Turkey.”

For example, last year, in Gurgaon, India, local authorities said a ring of four doctors and five nurses working at three local hospitals had performed more than 400 kidney transplants over the previous nine years.

Impoverished donors were recruited for as little as $1,000 for a kidney, said Mohinder Lal, a Gurgaon cop investigating the racket.

Typically, brokers like Rosenbaum would deal with hospital transplant coordinators, usually nurses, who would make all the arrangements.

“Some of these coordinators I suspect are corrupt, others were simply trying to do good for desperate people,” Schepper-Hughes said.

wsherman@nydailynews.com

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Another reason so many young people stray off the path. The "leadership" is for the pits.

From their eyes, they see a Jew with the title "rabbi" dressed in the traditional garb, never missing a minyan, but this is all one big facade.

After prayers, after learning, and when mikva dipping is concluded - the mask is unvieled and this "holy" and "pious" jew goes back to his daily routine of lies, currupton, thievery, and deciet.

You can be sure that on T'sha B'aav the synogogues will be flooded with the fakaroos who live this life of lies. They may even shed some crocodile tears, as if the destruction of the temples hit such a nerve, but evidently not deep enough to cause them to comply with moral values, let alone "rabbi" values.

money hungry said...

The daas torah of today let their frumkeit get the best of them. Everything revolves around money. So if parents can't afford tuition rates they will not be able to send kids there. If a child was molested, it must be covered up so no lawsuits or bad exposure abounds thus causing financial destruction. If money is to be had by taking the organs of underprivlaged members of society and funnelling them through bogus charities so be it. No shame at all.

"Rabbi" Shlomo Mandel said...

On this Tisha B'av I will cry my usual crocodile tears. Of course, afterwards, I will continue to look in the mirror and convince myself that i'm not a beast, just somebody that gives child molester's the opportunity to work at YOB so they can earn a decent parnassah.

I will also retain my Agudas Yisroel membership and keep going to their dinners, because they too, are of the same mindset.

Now, please excuse me while I search for my plastic slipwear in preparation for the fast and the tears.

the jewish week said...

http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c36_a16414/News/New_York.html

Partial:

The Syrian Jewish community, based in Brooklyn and the seaside town of Deal, N.J., acted swiftly this week to control the fallout from money-laundering allegations against four prominent rabbis — charges that could put some of its major institutions under scrutiny.


Community sources told The Jewish Week that some of the accused were under pressure from lay leaders to immediately resign from their pulpits. In an internal statement obtained by The Jewish Week on Tuesday, a group of religious and lay leaders urged members to unambiguously denounce the alleged conduct as a betrayal of their values.

“These allegations are profoundly troubling, even though they are still allegations,” wrote Morris Bailey, chairman of the Sephardic Community Alliance, an umbrella group of some two dozen organizations
including schools and synagogues. “If over time, however, these charges prove to be true, we must be clear that we find this conduct reprehensible and that the alleged actions go against the very values and teachings that our community holds dear.”

Bailey added, “Any individual action, especially when so isolated from the majority norm, does not in any way reflect on our traditional values; those being a lifelong commitment to Torah, family and society at large.”

Baruch Dayan Haemes said...

Rabbi Moshe Chait Passes Away

by Hillel Fendel
Follow Israel news on and .


(IsraelNN.com) Rabbi Moshe Chait, the Dean of Yeshivat Chafetz Chaim in Jerusalem, passed away on Tisha B'Av eve, at the age of 87. He had been hospitalized in Hadassah Mt. Scopus Hospital.

Rabbi Chait was a long-time rabbi of the Young Israel of Wavecrest and Bayswater in Far Rockaway, New York. He was also a revered teacher at James Striar School (JSS) in Yeshiva University.

Rabbi Chait made aliyah with his family in 1970 and founded the Jerusalem branch of Yeshivat Chafetz Chaim.

He was known as a master of Mussar (Torah ethics), as well as teaching the very precise method of Talmud study for which Chafetz Chaim has long been known. As his son-in-law Rabbi Mark Harris said at the funeral, he always considered himself a student of the late Chafetz Chaim dean Rabbi David Liebowitz. His thousands of students were drawn to his love and patience for all, sparkling smile and shining eyes, and what his son Rabbi Baruch Chait said was his "sanctifiying G-d's Name in everything he did."

Rabbi Chait is survived by his wife Esther and five children, including Rabbis Baruch, David and Reuven Chait, and his brother Rabbi Leon Chait.

His family is sitting shiva at 44 Eshkol in Ramat Eshkol, Jerusalem from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. and from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Faxes may be sent to 02-532-5380 from within Israel, and to +972-2-532-5380 from abroad.

Solomon Dwek said...

Meet the flimflamming informant, Solomon Dwek, behind the busts
BY Adam Lisberg
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Thursday, July 23rd 2009, 9:56 PM


McCarthy/Asbury Park Press

Solomon Dwek
Related News
Articles
Sweeping federal probe nabs crooked politicians & alleged black-market kidney peddler
Shocking bribe probe hauls in dozens in N.J.
Daly: 7-year quest to end Rosenbaum's evil work pays off
Hudson County long a nest of Jersey devils
CLICK TO SEE CRIMINAL COMPLAINTS
The son of a prominent New Jersey rabbi, Solomon Dwek brought shame on his tight-knit Syrian Jewish community when he was arrested for bank fraud in 2006.

That pales next to the shocking mission he undertook - exposing his community's top rabbis as a ring of accused money launderers and bringing down nearly two dozen Jersey pols as corrupt.

For years, Dwek, 36, had his hands in hundreds of real estate deals and get-rich schemes.

His empire included a gambling boat, estates in Jersey and Florida, office buildings and plans to build high-rises just across the river from Manhattan.

It all came tumbling down when he was accused of bouncing a $25 million check.

He appears to have gone from full-time mini-mogul to a very busy federal snitch after that - even as he filed bankruptcy and was besieged by creditors.

Dwek is the observant son of Rabbi Isaac Dwek, leader of the Syrian Jews who turned a summer getaway in Deal, N.J., into a wealthy sanctuary of Mediterranean-style mansions for their Brooklyn-based community.

The Syrian Jewish community is renowned for its charity and insularity - taking care of its own from cradle to grave but excommunicating anyone who dares to marry outside the faith.

While his father founded a thriving yeshiva, Dwek jumped into the world of commerce - buying properties when he was barely out of his teens.

In the decade that followed, he built a real estate empire based in Monmouth County - and a reputation as a generous benefactor.

His world collapsed in 2006, when he reportedly deposited a worthless $25 million check at a bank's drive-through window, then withdrew almost $23 million against it.

The cash-strapped Dwek soon filed for bankruptcy after being charged with fraud. Angry crowds of creditors jammed a New Jersey courtroom, desperate to recover some $400 million they lost.

Even after he was known to be in dire legal trouble, though, top rabbis in Brooklyn and New Jersey huddled with Dwek to plot money laundering crimes, authorities said.

alisberg@nydailynews.com



Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/07/24/2009-07-24_meet_the_flimflamming_informant_behind_busts.html#ixzz0MjmDQxEh

Anonymous said...

Somone wrote on this blog of how Rav Dovid Cohen was instrumental in handing over yona weinberg to the police and that this is public knowledge. I highly doubt it. If anyone could attest to its validity please do.

Cohen has been rumered to have helped pedophiles escape. He has been accused of railroading an incest victim and of refusing to get involved when victims sought his help.

another kolko pedophile said...

http://www.app.com/article/20090720/NEWS/90720060/1070/NEWS02

Camp counselor at private Lakewood school charged with sexually assaulting boy By Michelle Sahn • STAFF WRITER • July 20, 2009

LAKEWOOD — A camp counselor who worked at a program run at a Lakewood private school has been arrested on charges that he sexually assaulted a young boy.

Yosef A. Kolko, 33, of Gefen Drive, Lakewood, who worked as a camp counselor at Yachad, a summer camp based out of Bais Hatorah School on Swathmore Drive, was arrested Sunday, authorities said.

He was charged with aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault and endangering the welfare of a child.

Authorities said the criminal activity occurred within the past year, and the victim was a boy under the age of 13.

Bail for Kolko was set at $125,000 and if he is released on bail, he is not allowed to have contact with the victim or anyone else under the age of 18, according to the complaint.

Anyone with information about the case is asked to call Ocean County Prosecutor's Office Senior Investigation Colleen Lynch in the special victims unit at 732-929-2027, Ext. 2905 or Lakewood Detective Thomas D'Elia at 732-363-0200.

around the blogs said...

The Next Generation Kolko - YUDI KOLKO ALERT
Yudi Kolko's nephew from Lakewood, Yossi Kolko, a thirty three year old single man, that taught in a yeshiva and was a counselor in an Orthodox Jewish summer camp, was arrested last week for child sex-abuse. The difference this time, is that allegedly, one of his many victims, is a very close blood relative of a faculty member of the Lakewood Yeshiva, Beth Medrash Govoha, and they went to the police.

It was bound to become public knowledge, not that this is the first time a staff member of a yeshiva's family were victims of child sex-abuse by a rebbe or another adult member of the Jewish community. But...now it's slamming the door in Matisyahu Salomon's lying face for being the pompous putz that he is for claiming to be handling all these allegations (that don't exist) in a "dignified" manner for all involved. When push came to shove, and it was an "aigener kint", Rabbi so and so from the Lakewood Yeshiva told Salomon to let the door hit him in the tuchis, he'll take action that should be taken by every parent, going to the police.

And the attitude that is still prevalent today in these idiot circles of rabbis, is that they're immune from these horrific tragedies. Why do they believe that? Because somehow these hallucinating psychos, are so pathetic that they actually believe their own lies.

I want to be clear, any child that is victimized hurts my heart. But these insane parents who refuse to immunize their own children by having a "Faith Healer" tend to their children's urgent mental medical needs, will just have to learn the hard way.

When is enough, enough? When do you realize that if YOU don't do something about this pandemic of child sex-abuse, your own loved ones will suffer, that it's just a matter of time?

And to all the Matisyahu Salomons I say -- the damage you caused to innocent children and their families is unforgivable!

YUDI KOLKO ALERT!!!!!

A friend of UOJ writes..

Yudi Kolko has taken up residence -- "for the rest of the summer", according to his wife -- at 162 Laurel Park Road, Fallsburg, NY, which is within the PINES ESTATES complex. His presence there has caused a bit of a stir....there are at least one hundred children there, and a number of parents -- are understandably concerned. Unfortunately, there is ample evidence to believe that the roshei yeshiva at the Yeshiva of South Fallsburg initially told their minions that Kolko is Kosher V'Yashar. While they have quietly moved off that position, it seems that he's unwilling to undo the damage the yeshiva did, by now rightly declaring him a menace to children.

I'm at a loss as to what to do. I think a warning should be posted to anyone with children that's even contemplating renting a place in the PINES ESTATES, advising them to go elsewhere......Maybe, if the kool aid drinking yeshivaleit are effected where it really hurts -- in their pockets -- they might actually rise up against this cancer and throw him out too. I understand he initially rented a place in a Chassidishe colony in Woodburne, but when they got wind of him, they packed his bags for him and threw him out.

The Jewish Star said...

http://thejewishstar.wordpress.com/2009/07/29/trouble-in-the-catskills/
-----------------------------------

Kolko kicked out of one colony but finds another
By Michael Orbach
Issue of July 31, 2009 / 10 Av 5769

In the Catskills this summer, worries about children’s safety are extending beyond the swimming pool.

Yehuda Kolko, the rebbe who pleaded guilty to two counts of child endangerment and who is suspected of abusing dozens of children in his teaching career, moved into a summer home at a development in South
Fallsburg, N.Y., on June 12. Pines Estates, where he is renting, is a popular summer destination for Orthodox families and is also inhabited year-round by families connected to the well-known Yeshiva of South Fallsburg, nearby.

On Kolko’s first Friday night there, a summer resident aware of Kolko’s history confronted him in the shul during Maariv and told him to leave the neighborhood quietly, a witness said. When Kolko refused, the man interrupted the tefilah to announce from the bima that Kolko was a child molester and posed a danger to children. When congregants protested, the man at the bima, said to be a student of Rav Dovid Feinstein, replied with multiple Halachic sources to support his action, one of which was Masechet Chullin 8a, which discusses the need to be strict when it comes to matters of danger.

The next day, Shabbat morning, at the Yeshiva of South Fallsburg nearby, the same witness said Kolko was welcomed and called to the Torah for an Aliyah.

Daniel Sosnowik, a resident of Pines Estates who has an eight-year-old son, was shocked. Sosnowik is a captain in the New York City Police Department.

“We have hundreds of kids here,” Sosnowik told the Jewish Star, “Kolko doesn’t belong here.”

When Sosnowik spoke to the gabbai of the yeshiva minyan he was told that Rabbi Tzvi Abba Gorelick, the dean and owner of Yeshiva of South Fallsburg, had declared Kolko to be “kosher.” That night, residents of Pines Estates visited Kolko and apologized for their neighbor’s actions the previous night. When Sosnowik met with Rabbi Gorelick to express his concerns Rabbi Gorelick maintained that the yeshiva must be “neutral” regarding Kolko, Sosnowik recalled. He quoted Rabbi Gorelick as saying that the issue was complicated by the “stigma” associated with child abuse.

One of Kolko’s sons attended Yeshiva of South Fallsburg, Sosnowik said he was told.

“Am I the only one crazy here?” Sosnowik asked, “How could parents do this? How could yeshiva leaders do this?”

Rabbi Elya Ber Wachtfogel, the rosh yeshiva, vigorously denied that Kolko was welcomed.

“We just said we can’t throw him out; nobody knows him!” he exclaimed. “I don’t even know him! I met him for the first time!

Continued....

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It is unfortunate that it has come to this. It is a big darn shame it has come to this. It is very hurtful that it has come to this. But yet, IT HAS COME TO THIS. It has come at the price of a GREAT CHILUL HASHEM. It has come to Hashem having to allow his holy name to be DESECRATED so that his CHILDREN remain SAFE. Shame on all those responsible for enabling and permitting Hashem's name to be desecrated! When you save children you save the future. You save the future you save generations. You save generations you save lives. You save lives you have saved the world!!!!!!!