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Rabbinical court rules Berlin rabbi accused of sexual misconduct should not hold positions of authority
(JTA) – A Jewish religious court has determined that a Berlin rabbi accused of manipulating women into sexual contact should not hold any positions of religious authority in the Jewish world.
The decision, announced Wednesday morning, follows days of testimony from at least 15 women who had accused Reuven Yaacobov of using his rabbinical status to force them to comply with his sexual demands over more than a decade. Yaacobov also testified last week before the court, known as a beit din, after the court delayed its process to accommodate him.
“Reuven Yaacobov is not fit to hold a rabbinical position,” the beit din said in a letter to the plaintiffs who had testified, and who were authorized to share the letter publicly.
“Accordingly, he should not serve in any religious, rabbinical, or educational positions such as a Rabbi, shochet (ritual slaughterer), mohel (circumciser), sofer (scribe), and teacher,” the letter said.
Yaacobov had filled all of those roles in Berlin’s Jewish community over nearly two decades. The Jewish Community of Berlin, the communal umbrella organization, had fired him on May 31, one day after hearing testimony from several women who accused him of sexual misconduct. They and other women came forward afterward to give the beit din their accounts of being preyed upon by Yaacobov, whom they said had taken advantage of their naivete or emotional vulnerability to use religious arguments to lure them into sexual relations.
“I am happy that his status has been removed,” one of the women who testified before the beit din told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Wednesday. “I fear he will continue to influence people, to manipulate and do his things, but the decision means there will be fewer victims.
“The more public it is, the better,” added the woman, who asked to remain anonymous because she said she feared Yaacobov. “If everyone in the whole world shares this, he will have less chances to do his things elsewhere.”
In a public statement, the rabbinical court said its decisions reflected a clear expression of communal values.
“A person who harasses or abuses others is not suitable to hold a rabbinical position and should not be in religious, rabbinical or educational positions,” the court said.
In a statement issued through his attorney, Yaacobov disputed the court’s legitimacy under Jewish law and said its process had been “one-sided,” with his guilt predetermined. He also said the court and he were operating under “two different worldviews as far as Judaism is concerned” because the court is made of Ashkenazi rabbis and he is a Sephardic Jew.
“I do not accept the beit din’s decision and will contradict it in another beit din,” he said in the statement. “Today I know more than before that it was a targeted campaign against me, and that beit din was part of that campaign. I remain strong and will continue to fight until the full truth comes out and all the people who organized this campaign will be punished by the court.”
Yaacobov also noted in the statement that the beit din had not ordained him and thus could not rescind his rabbinic ordination. While the beit din did not claim to rescind his ordination, Rabbi Avichai Apel — who is on the board of ORD, Germany’s Orthodox rabbinical organization, and was one of the rabbis sitting on the bet din — said his group has been in touch with the Israel-based organization that ordained Yaacobov.
The ORD said that all circumcisions and bar mitzvahs carried out by Yaacobov remain valid. Apel told JTA anyone who had concerns about the status of a Torah scroll written by Yaacobov could contact the organization.
The rabbis of the beit din issued several other calls intended to manage the fallout of the case, which has particularly impacted a subset of Germany’s Russian-speaking Jewish community. The rabbis called on the general public to “continue to treat his wife and children with respect,” and to ignore any photos that the accused might publish of his accusers.
Some of the women who spoke to JTA previously said that when they tried to extricate themselves from Yaacobov’s influence, he told them he had taken compromising photos or videos of them and others and would release them.
Apel said the beit din warned Yaacobov not to release any such photos, if he had them.
The rabbis of the beit din also urged the Jewish Community of Berlin to reopen the Sephardic Synagogue, which has been locked since Yaacobov’s firing, as swiftly as possible, and to provide financial support to the women to cover the costs of psychological treatment “for the trauma they have suffered and its consequences.”
Another woman who had testified before the beit din told JTA on Wednesday that the swift action against Yaacobov over the last six weeks reflected the right approach to allegations of sexual misconduct.
“If you want to be sure that something is just a rumor, you have to investigate it,” the woman said. “The person with the resources and the power and the knowledge, they need to investigate.”
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The post Rabbinical court rules Berlin rabbi accused of sexual misconduct should not hold positions of authority appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Treasure Trove explores the curious case of a stamp from an imaginary land
This 1 V. postage revenue stamp from West Refaim was postmarked in Virikoso in South Giantsland 100 years ago. Problem is—none of these places ever existed. There is a second […]
The post Treasure Trove explores the curious case of a stamp from an imaginary land appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Israel Has Told ICC It Will Contest Arrest Warrants, Netanyahu Says
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant during a press conference in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, Israel, Oct. 28, 2023. Photo: ABIR SULTAN POOL/Pool via REUTERS
Israel has informed the International Criminal Court that it will contest arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant over their conduct of the Gaza war, Netanyahu’s office said on Wednesday.
The office also said that US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham had updated Netanyahu “on a series of measures he is promoting in the US Congress against the International Criminal Court and against countries that would cooperate with it.”
The ICC issued arrest warrants last Thursday for Netanyahu, Gallant, and Hamas leader Ibrahim Al-Masri, known as Mohammed Deif, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict.
The move comes after the ICC prosecutor Karim Khan announced on May 20 that he was seeking arrest warrants for alleged crimes connected to the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas and the Israeli military response in Gaza.
Israel has rejected the jurisdiction of the Hague-based court and denies war crimes in Gaza.
“Israel today submitted a notice to the International Criminal Court of its intention to appeal to the court, along with a demand to delay the execution of the arrest warrants,” Netanyahu’s office said.
Court spokesperson Fadi El Abdallah told journalists that if requests for an appeal were submitted it would be up to the judges to decide
The court’s rules allow for the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution that would pause or defer an investigation or a prosecution for a year, with the possibility of renewing that annually.
After a warrant is issued the country involved or a person named in an arrest warrant can also issue a challenge to the jurisdiction of the court or the admissibility of the case.
The post Israel Has Told ICC It Will Contest Arrest Warrants, Netanyahu Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Jewish Girls Attacked in London With Glass Bottles in Antisemitic Outrage
Shomrim officers at the scene of a hate crime in London in which Jewish girls were struck with glass bottles. Photo: Shomrim Stamford Hill/Screenshot
A group of young Jewish girls were the victims of an “abhorrent hate crime” when a man hurled glass bottles at them from a balcony as they were walking through the Stamford Hill section of London on Monday evening.
One of the girls was struck in the head and rushed to the hospital with serious but non-life threatening injuries, according to local law enforcement.
A spokesperson for London’s Metropolitan Police said officers were called to the Woodberry Down Estate in the city’s borough of Hackney following reports of an assault on Monday evening at 7:44 pm local time.
“A group of schoolgirls had been walking through the estate when a bottle was thrown from the upper floor of a building,” the spokesperson said. “A 16-year-old girl was struck on the head and was taken to hospital. Her injuries have since been assessed as non-life changing.”
Police noted they were unable to locate the suspect and an investigation is ongoing before adding, “The incident is being treated as a potential antisemitic hate crime.”
Following the incident, Shomrim, a Jewish organization that monitors antisemitism and serves as a neighborhood watch group, reported that the girls were en route to a rehearsal for an upcoming event. The community, the group added, was “shocked” by the attack on “innocent young Jewish girls,” calling it an “abhorrent hate crime.”
14-year-old girl rushed to Hospital with head & facial injuries following an attack in #StamfordHill.
Young Jewish girls on their way to a rehearsal were pelted with glass bottles by a male on a balcony at Woodberry Down Estate N4.
This… pic.twitter.com/MzHPHusgyX
— Shomrim (London North & East) (@Shomrim) November 26, 2024
Since then, another Jewish girl, age 14, has reported being pelted with a hard object which caused her to be “knocked unconscious, and left feeling dizzy and with a bump on her head,” according to Shomrim.
Monday’s crime was one among many which have targeted London Jews in recent years, an issue The Algemeiner has reported on extensively.
Last December, an Orthodox Jewish man was assaulted by a man riding a bicycle on the sidewalk, two attackers brutally mauled a Jewish woman, and a group of Jewish children was berated by a woman who screamed “I’ll kill all of you Jews. You are murderers!” A similar incident occurred when a man confronted a Jewish shopper and shouted, “You f—king Jew, I will kill you!”
Months prior, a perpetrator stalked and assaulted an Orthodox Jewish woman. He followed her, shouting “dirty Jew” before snatching her shopping bag and “spilling her shopping onto the pavement whilst laughing.” That incident followed a woman wielding a wooden stick approaching a Jewish woman near the Seven Sisters area and declaring “I am doing it because you are Jew,” while striking her over the head and pouring liquid on her. The next day, the same woman — described by an eyewitness as a “serial racist” — chased a mother and her baby with a wooden stick after spraying liquid on the baby. That same week, three people accosted a Jewish teenager and knocked his hat off his head while yelling “f—king Jew.”
According to an Algemeiner review of Metropolitan Police Service data, 2,383 antisemitic hate crimes occurred in London between October 2023 and October 2024, eclipsing the full-year totals of 550 in 2022 and 845 in 2021. The problem is so serious that city officials created a new bus route to help Jewish residents “feel safe” when they travel.
“Jewish Londoners have felt scared to leave their homes,” London Mayor Sadiq Khan told The Jewish Chronicle in a statement about the policy decision earlier this year. “So, this direct bus link between these two significant communities [Stamford Hill in Hackney and Golders Green in Barnet, areas with two of the biggest Jewish communities in London] means you can travel on the 310, not need to change, and be safe and feel safer. I hope that will lead to more Londoners from these communities using public transport safely.”
Khan added that the route “connects communities, connects congregations” and would reassure Jewish Londoners they would be “safe when they travel between these two communities.”
However, it doesn’t solve the problem at hand — an explosion of antisemitism unlike anything seen in the Western world since World War II. Just this week, according to a story by GB News, an unknown group scattered leaflets across the streets of London which threatened that “every Zionist needs to leave Britain or be slaughtered.”
Responding to this latest incident, the director of the Jewish civil rights group StandWithUs UK Isaaz Zarfati told GB News that the comments should be taken “seriously.”
“We are witnessing a troubling trend of red lines being repeatedly crossed,” he said. “This is not just another wave that will pass if we remain passive. We must take those threats and statement seriously because they will one day turn into actions, and decisive steps are needed to combat this alarming phenomenon.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Jewish Girls Attacked in London With Glass Bottles in Antisemitic Outrage first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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