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BERLIN (JTA) — As a youngster in Berlin, Adelle was honored when a rabbi started exhibiting curiosity in her non secular growth. Rabbi Reuven Yaacobov’s supply of private instruction was an interesting prospect to the Russian-speaking immigrant with no documentation of her Jewish heritage.
Over time, Yaacobov’s non-public classes escalated to cellphone calls and textual content messages and, finally, an invite to a Shabbat dinner at his condo, situated so removed from her dwelling that she would want to remain over to keep away from the prohibition on touring on Shabbat.
There, Adelle was shocked to find that Yaacobov’s spouse was away and she or he was the one visitor. After establishing the sofa for Adelle, Yaacobov informed her she wanted a therapeutic massage. There have been factors in her physique, he stated, the place her vitality was blocked.
He started along with her again however finally informed her that the factors that wanted consideration — he referred to as them chakras, a Hindu time period, and sefirot, a time period from Jewish mysticism — included her uterus.
“He stated, ‘If I’m not urgent it now, mainly all that tough work I did’ – half an hour of arduous work urgent on my again – ‘all that tough work goes to go to waste. Should you don’t activate all of it the best way, it’s not going to work,’” Adelle recalled.
“I used to be very contemporary to Jewish life. I didn’t know a lot,” she stated. “I used to be undecided, but when it’s a rabbi telling you that one thing is improper [with you], you already know, I sort of accepted it.”
After her formal conversion to Judaism, the touching escalated to stress to have sexual activity, which Yaacobov stated was permitted underneath Jewish regulation if he took her as a secret second spouse.
He informed Adelle that by means of her conversion she had absorbed the spirit of Batsheva, the Biblical lady whom King David famously noticed from afar and took as his spouse — regardless that he needed to have her husband killed to make it occur. Yaacobov stated that solely he, as a self-described descendant of David, had particular powers to heal her.
When she balked, he informed her that she would “keep a zero, identical to you at the moment are” and that her non secular growth would stay stunted.
“He made it very clear that I’m a no one at that time,” she recalled. “And, so, 19-year-old me, from not an excellent household background — that was an announcement that sounded true.”
Rabbi Reuven Yaacobov stands on stage with safety guards throughout the ceremonial handover of a brand new Torah scroll that he had written to the Jewish regional congregation in Erfurt, Germany, Sept. 30, 2021.(Martin Schutt/image alliance through Getty Photos)
Yaacobov’s maintain over her was so full, Adelle stated, that when her Orthodox women faculty introduced that college students might now not affiliate with the rabbi, she rejected the warning.
“They summoned me to talk about that, and informed me some horrifying issues about him, and I used to be in full denial,” she stated. “I stated, ‘No, no, it can’t be, he’s a holy particular person. It can’t be, it’s improper, you guys are improper!’ I used to be preventing towards them.”
That was in 2010. For years, Adelle informed her story to nobody. However ultimately, she discovered that “there was an entire crew of Batshevas” — girls like her whom Yaacobov had recognized as weak and groomed for intercourse, leveraging their naivete about Judaism to his benefit.
Now, Yaacobov has been fired from his place because the rabbi of Tiferet Israel, Berlin’s Sephardic synagogue, due to the alleged misconduct. His termination got here simply in the future after Adelle and different girls — organized by a onetime champion of Yaacobov named Elena Eyngorn — introduced their tales to the Jewish Group of Berlin, the group that oversees most Jewish establishments within the metropolis and employs a few of its clergy.
“In view of the seriousness of the allegations, the Govt Board was shocked and outraged and instantly launched Rabbi Yaacobov and at last fired him with out discover efficient Might 31,” Ilan Kiesling, the group’s spokesperson, stated in an announcement to the Jewish Telegraphic Company.
He stated Tiferet Israel could be “closed till the details have been totally clarified” and that worshipers might pray at a close-by synagogue as a substitute. He additionally stated steps could be taken to forestall “such incidents sooner or later” and famous {that a} spiritual courtroom, referred to as a beit din, may attempt Yaacobov in keeping with Jewish regulation.
“The neighborhood has promised the victims limitless assist,” Kiesling stated.
Yaacobov didn’t reply to JTA’s queries despatched through Fb messenger and WhatsApp.
Though the ladies and their advocates are relieved to see Yaacobov lose his pulpit, Yaacobov’s firing — which has not been publicly introduced — is elevating broader questions in regards to the neighborhood and its guardrails. How might his alleged misconduct have gone unaddressed for years? Might somebody have taken motion earlier?
In truth, the Jewish Group of Berlin, the native police and an Orthodox rabbinical courtroom in Moscow all obtained complaints about Yaacobov’s habits with girls previously. The complaints predated the sweeping cultural shift round responses to sexual misconduct, referred to as #MeToo, that started in 2017 when the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was accused of being a serial intercourse abuser.
“If Elena was ready to do that in two weeks, to stress the pinnacle of the neighborhood and get it finished and get him to lose his job, how come all of the highly effective those that knew about it for years couldn’t take him down?” Adelle requested. “How come?”
Yaacobov has lengthy been a preferred non secular chief in a subset of Berlin’s giant neighborhood of Russian-speaking Jews. Born in Uzbekistan and ordained by the Midrash Sepharadi Yeshiva in Jerusalem, Yaacobov, 46 and a married father of three, additionally studied on the Moscow Yeshiva in Russia and the Shavei Gola Yeshiva in Jerusalem earlier than being employed by the Jewish Group of Berlin 17 years in the past, in keeping with a biography that was faraway from the group’s web site this month.
Internal view of Berlin’s Tiferet Israel Sephardic Synagogue, as seen in 2016. (MaorX through Wikimedia Commons)
Along with main Tiferet Israel, Yaacobov has labored as a sofer, or ritual scribe, as a shochet or ritual slaughterer, and in addition as a mohel, performing brit milah, or conventional circumcision, on male infants. Sources locally say he has carried out circumcisions since being fired from his synagogue place. On his social media accounts, he posts inspirational movies and notes in Russian.
“By no means, ever let others persuade you that one thing is tough or unimaginable,” he wrote in a put up final week. “When you already know what you need, and also you need it dangerous sufficient, you’ll discover a strategy to get it.”
The complete scope of the allegations towards Yaacobov continues to be unfolding. JTA has met with two girls who say Yaacobov lured them into sexual relations, utilizing pseudo-religious justifications, and spoken with a 3rd who stated she bought away earlier than he touched her. The ladies are being recognized by pseudonyms as a result of they requested that their names not be revealed.
Others informed JTA they’re conscious of extra survivors. Eyngorn stated she has spoken immediately with 9, together with the three with whom JTA spoke; new accounts proceed to emerge, she stated, as phrase spreads about her inquiries.
What is obvious is that the testimony given to the Jewish Group of Berlin instigated speedy motion — providing a pointy distinction to what occurred at a number of different junctures when individuals raised issues about Yaacobov’s habits.
At the very least twice, girls went to regulation enforcement however no fees resulted. In a single case, Berlin’s prime prosecutor declined to research the report it obtained, telling an lawyer that as a result of their shopper was a authorized grownup on the time of the incident and appeared to have been capable of go away the scene if she needed, there was no grounds for a prison investigation.
In the meantime, a lady who left Germany for Moscow gave an announcement to the rabbinical courtroom there over a decade in the past, in keeping with Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, then the chief rabbi of Moscow. Goldschmidt, the longtime head of the Convention of European Rabbis, stated he handed the grievance alongside to Lala Suesskind, then president of the Jewish Group of Berlin. He was not conscious of any motion taken in response.
Suesskind informed JTA that she didn’t recall listening to from Goldschmidt however stated she had obtained a special tip about Yaacobov’s habits — which she dismissed as a rumor.
She stated a Berlin rabbi whom she wouldn’t identify had come to her with stories of sexual impropriety by Yaacobov throughout her tenure, which lasted from 2008 to 2012.
“I stated, ‘Then deliver the ladies to me.’ Nobody got here. Nobody did something,” Suesskind stated. “I’m somebody who doesn’t react to rumors and doesn’t unfold them. I had no details.”
Lala Suesskind, then president of the Jewish Group of Berlin, stands throughout a ceremony marking the seventieth anniversary of the deportation of Jews from Berlin to focus camps throughout the Holocaust, Oct. 18, 2011.(Sean Gallup/Getty Photos)
The turning level towards Yaacobov got here this spring after Liza Khurgin, a volunteer at a Berlin convention for Russian-speaking Jews held in March, raised issues about his habits following a lecture he delivered on the subject of “Kosher Intercourse.” She informed JTA she had objected to Yaacobov’s “sexist” feedback and left early — then started to get repeated messages from the rabbi.
“I don’t understand how he bought my Telegram contact,” she stated, referring to a safe textual content platform. “He began to message me that I regarded unhappy and somebody broke my coronary heart and he might help. He began to name on Telegram and tried to contact me once more on Fb, and I didn’t reply.”
She added, “It was not applicable. It was very bizarre. You don’t count on a rabbi to behave this manner.”
Khurgin urged the convention organizers by no means to ask Yaacobov once more. The organizers in flip knowledgeable Eyngorn, a former president of Germany’s Federation of Jewish College students who had nominated him to talk. Having recognized Yaacobov for years — he even carried out her son’s bris — she was shocked.
“Earlier than accusing somebody it’s important to test,” Eyngorn informed JTA. “I began to research and … realized this story had a for much longer historical past and was extra horrible than I imagined.”
Tales began spilling out, spanning years and all following the same trajectory. Eyngorn stated a number of girls informed her about how Yaacobov “groomed” them over weeks and months — after checking their age, steadily successful their belief and fealty, and finally swaying them to simply accept intimate touching and undergo sexual acts by claiming {that a} secretive Jewish courtroom had prescribed this remedy for them or — in one other variant — claiming that solely he, supposedly a descendant of King David, might rescue their souls.
Twisted invocations of scriptures and spiritual regulation are frequent amongst sexual predators who occur to be rabbis, stated Rabbi Yosef Blau, non secular steering counselor and rosh yeshiva on the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary at Yeshiva College in New York, and a longtime advocate for survivors of sexual misconduct within the Orthodox world.
Blau recalled being consulted a couple of totally different rabbi who had been accused of abusing teenagers.
“They had been individuals who at this level knew little or no about Jewish regulation, and subsequently it was doable for him to govern them to suppose what he tells them is permissible is permissible,” Blau stated. “He’s the rabbi who’s bringing them into Judaism, defining Judaism in his phrases, and that provides him a sure measure of management over them.”
Whereas the 2 girls who met with JTA weren’t legally minors on the time of the alleged misconduct, they described themselves in hindsight as impressionable and weak.
Sara, who first got here underneath his sway when she was 18, recalled Yaacobov progressing from classes in Kabbalah and Jewish regulation to telling her how you can stroll, do her hair and nails to be able to be enticing to males. The subsequent step appeared to comply with logically: photographing her in her underwear, supposedly to be able to test her “chakras.” He additionally informed her he was a physiotherapist, which additional undermined her skepticism, she recalled.
Afterward, “I simply left in a sort of shock,” Sara informed JTA. “I assumed one thing is clearly severely improper with me; that’s the reason all the issues are occurring to me that I discover so tough. So he’ll repair them, proper? And that is the discomfort I must undergo.”
Of their remaining assembly, she stated, he informed her {that a} secret Jewish courtroom required her to carry out oral intercourse on him. He insisted he was solely appearing in accordance along with her non secular wants — whereas making her swear to not inform anybody due to the chance of penalties within the “non secular realm.”
Estie was a bit older than the opposite girls who talked to JTA, now not a youngster, when Yaacobov began chatting along with her after she attended a lecture he gave on household values.
She had been going by means of a tough section, having simply ended a relationship. “He stated, ‘I’ll aid you,’ and he instantly began to offer me recommendation on how you can get a very good man,” she stated. After they met as soon as in public, he invited her for “coaching.”
From there, her story mirrored these of Adelle and Sara.
“He stated, ‘Your chakras are closed, it’s good to open up,’” Estie recalled. Then, he invited her to his dwelling. She was wanting ahead to assembly the spouse and youngsters he spoke of so warmly, and acquired some kosher sweet as a present. However when she arrived at his condo, she found she was alone with him.
“He stated he needed to offer me a therapeutic massage,” she stated. “It was a bizarre, uncomfortable state of affairs. I’m alone with a rabbi in his condo and he needs to offer me a therapeutic massage – a full-body therapeutic massage. He stated, ‘You ought to be extra open, it’s best to open your buttons.’”
Estie stated she made up an excuse and left. “I didn’t let him do it. I bought out with little or no injury.” Afterward, she stated, he referred to as her incessantly.
“He stated he might help me and I’m denying his assist, and he made me really feel actually dangerous about myself,” she stated.
Estie stated she had been ready to deal with her trauma, partly by jokingly referring to Yaacobov as “Reuven the Masseur.” However she stated she was “shocked” when she discovered, by means of Eyngorn, that different younger girls had been in the same state of affairs to hers.
“I didn’t know that it was his pastime. I didn’t know he was so dangerous, that he did a lot worse issues,” she stated.
“I actually trusted him,” she added. “I informed him my story about my breakup and I cried. He seems for people who find themselves weak or weak in the intervening time. He informed me, ‘I’ll aid you.’”
Adelle, Sara and Estie had been all immigrants to Germany from the previous Soviet Union; about 90% of German Jews at the moment have roots there. Whereas Estie was exploring her Jewish roots on her personal, Adelle and Sara had been attending an Orthodox faculty created to serve younger Russian-speaking girls amid a broad push to attach immigrants with the Judaism that they had been prohibited from accessing underneath communism.
Their profile — younger, Russian-speaking Jews on the seek for non secular achievement — could have made them targets. “Based on my humble understanding it’s a matter of discovering weak individuals,” stated Rabbi Zsolt Balla of Leipzig, who has endorsed Eyngorn and a number of the girls as they put together to hunt redress in a non secular courtroom.
Rabbi Zsolt Balla speaks in a synagogue in Saxony, Germany, June 21, 2021. (Hendrik Schmidt/image alliance through Getty Photos)
“Somebody who needs to groom individuals has to seek out the frequent denominator,” and on this state of affairs, Balla stated, “it was language.”
Shana Aaronson, the manager director of Magen-Israel, an advocacy group for survivors of sexual misconduct in spiritual communities in Israel, stated it was vital that the rabbi’s alleged misconduct got here as the ladies had been being steeped in Orthodox Judaism, the place rabbinic management confers energy.
In Orthodox communities, “we’re educated from an early age to do what the rabbi says,” Aaronson stated. A predator’s “first step is an overstepping of boundaries, involving themselves in features of the particular person’s life that don’t fall into the rabbi’s function: ‘Let me information you and advise you on this, that and the opposite factor not associated to their non secular observance.”
Then, she stated, they break down emotional boundaries, and finally give Jewish authorized or “halachic reasoning for why what I’m now telling you to do is OK or essential.” Some will even deliver texts to justify their actions, she stated.
“Sure, we’re taught that this habits is forbidden, nevertheless it all the time comes again to the truth that the rabbi is aware of greatest,” Aaronson stated. “It sounds absurd, however even a younger lady who’s educated is actually not as educated as a rabbi. If he says on this case it’s allowed, who’s she to query that?”
When Adelle realized that she had been victimized, she apologized to her faculty’s administration for not heeding its warning about Yaacobov. She additionally started realizing that she wanted to unlearn the twisted model of Judaism that he had taught her.
“I began to get up and reevaluate all the things he taught me, all the things he stated, ever,” Adelle recalled. “Three years of telling me issues, three years of nonsense, together with Torah, together with improper data, improper halacha, improper all the things. It was like being reborn.”
The women faculty was not the one Jewish establishment to maintain Yaacobov at a distance. ORD, Germany’s Orthodox rabbinical group, spurned his bid for membership greater than as soon as a minimum of a decade in the past after a majority of members voted towards his software. Their causes aren’t public.
Now, ORD is hoping to take motion to forestall hurt to different girls. Rabbi Avichai Apel, a board member, stated the group needs to convene a non secular courtroom or beit din rapidly to adjudicate the claims of Yaacobov’s alleged victims underneath Jewish regulation.
A beit din can’t put somebody in jail, however it may well difficulty pronouncements that have an effect on an individual’s function locally. It might “difficulty a public assertion saying that [the accused] is just not allowed to work together with girls or declaring him unfit to function a rabbi,” stated Blau, who has begun advising ORD about its dealing with of Yaacobov. “In impact he could have been discovered responsible.”
Rabbi and Torah scribe Reuven Yaacobov writes sections of a Torah on the Jewish Museum in Berlin, July 10, 2014. (Adam Berry/Getty Photos)
The beit din might come to that conclusion, Blau and Goldschmidt stated, even when the particular person going through allegations is just not current at its proceedings. And in contrast to the secular authorized system in Germany, Jewish courts don’t differentiate between alleged victims who’re older and youthful than 18.
In Jewish settings, Blau stated, “an accused perpetrator is accountable at any time when he takes benefit of an influence imbalance, regardless of the age of the victims.”
Apel declined to touch upon Yaacobov’s case particularly however stated he stated he knew that sharing testimonies with rabbis might be arduous for the ladies.
“It’s a state of affairs that no one needs to think about for himself, it’s so horrible, actually horrible,” he stated. “However sadly they’ve to talk about it.”
He additionally stated he deliberate to speak together with his personal congregation in regards to the topic of sexual abuse, to assist them acknowledge and forestall it, and to assist survivors.
Goldschmidt stated the extra witnesses who seem earlier than a beit din, the extra doubtless the rabbinical courtroom is to seek out of their favor.
“When it’s a story of 1 man towards a lady, it’s her phrase towards his,” stated Goldschmidt,. “However if you’re speaking about an entire line of people that alleged that an individual has been sexually improper with them, in 99% of the instances [it turns out] that the place there may be smoke, there may be hearth.”
Eyngorn stated that, in her view, the state of affairs isn’t just a fireplace however a conflagration. Within the days after Yaacobov was terminated, she stated her cellphone rang “each second second” with individuals offended that she had labored towards him.
“Ladies from his synagogue had been accusing me: ‘You fired such an awesome rabbi! We’re girls and it by no means occurred to us!’” she recalled. “I stated, ‘It additionally didn’t occur to me; that’s not an argument in any respect.’”
Since then, she stated, a few of them have referred to as again or written to apologize, saying that they, too, have tales about Yaacobov.
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