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Satmar Grand Rebbe visits convicted sexual abuser Nechemya Weberman in prison
(New York Jewish Week) — The Satmar “Grand Rebbe” Zalman Teitelbaum paid a visit to convicted sexual abuser Nechemya Weberman in prison last month, according to a Yiddish-language newspaper serving the Satmar Hasidic community that has published a series of favorable articles about the former therapist accused of sexually abusing an adolescent girl starting from when the victim was 12 years old.
The visit, and the weekly series of articles in Kiryas Joel Vochenshrift, have riled advocates for sexual abuse victims in the Hasidic community. They say the community’s leadership has a pattern of downplaying abuse charges and in this case convictions, further traumatizing the victims.
A sexual abuse survivor who lives in Kiryas Joel, the Orange County, New York seat of Zalman Teitelbaum’s Satmar faction, told the New York Jewish Week that abuse victims like her feel they are “being stabbed” when they see support for accused abusers in the Hasidic media and among their leaders.
“It’s retraumatizing victims,” said the survivor, who asked not to be named for reasons of privacy and safety. “It’s being stabbed every week, again and again, and knowing that if you’re ever going to open your mouth you’re going to be kicked out.”
The woman said that other survivors within the community told her “that they are not going to come forward so quick again because they see this every week.”
“It’s the most horrific thing,” the source said. “I am reliving all the hell that I’ve gone through. They are taking a molester, who did the worst thing, and they are promoting him, and calling him holy.”
An article from Kiryas Joel Vochenshrift, which is publishing a weekly series about convicted sexual abuser Nechemya Weberman. (Courtesy)
The newspaper serves the faction of the Satmar community that is loyal to Zalman Teitelbaum. It published an article about his visit on Nov. 11.
A weekly series sympathetic to Weberman has been running since August. The articles are written accounts from organized visits to Weberman’s jail cell by members of the community, including prominent rabbis. They include letters from Weberman himself and letters from people in the community to him.
“They say he’s wrongfully accused,” Shulim Leifer, a member of the Hasidic community who has read the articles, told the New York Jewish Week. “It’s written in a sense that it’s a foregone conclusion, that it’s a lynching that he went through.”
Accrding to the article about Teitelbaum’s visit, the rabbi spent over an hour with Weberman and “offered words of faith and belief in God” while the convicted sexual abuser was at Rikers Island for an appeal, the article said. Weberman is now at Shawangunk Prison in upstate New York. “Thanks to Hashem, after much advocacy, we did manage to prevail and we managed to get a visit from the [Grand Rebbe] who was able to come into the dark walls,” the article reported.
The United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg and North Brooklyn, whose leaders act as spokespeople for Teitelbaum, declined a request from the New York Jewish Week for comment.
The articles are written by Rabbi Abraham Yehoshua Fraynd. Neither Fraynd nor the newspaper responded to a request for comment.
Weberman, was an unlicensed therapist who served the fervently Orthodox Satmar community, was 54 when he was convicted in 2012 of sexually abusing a young woman over the course of three years beginning in 2007. He was given a 103-year sentence in 2013, close to the maximum permitted by law.
The victim spent 15 hours on the witness stand recalling how she had been repeatedly raped and forced to perform oral sex in Weberman’s counseling office, where she had been sent because of her alleged immodest dress and rebellious behavior.
Many members of the Satmar community stood behind Weberman, who had served as the driver for the late Grand Rebbe Moses Teitelbaum, the father of Zalman Teitelbaum and his brother Aaron, who now lead rival factions of the Hasidic movement. Aaron Teitelbaum went so far as to suggest that Weberman’s accuser was “a zona,” which translates to “whore.” The victim claimed that after going to the district attorney, she received both bribes and threats in an attempt to convince her not to testify. The Hasidic community has long discouraged members from going to outside law enforcement, a practice long decried by advocates for victims of sexual abuse and other crimes.
In an article published Dec. 6, Weberman is quoted saying that his prison trial was “a mesira,” an act in which one Jew informs on another in contravention of Jewish law.
“Yes it’s true that there was a jury trial,” Weberman said in the piece. “It’s true in the course of nature, you can expect to get a prison term from a jury in such a case, but I got something that’s over 100 years. And that is something that’s outside of the ordinary.”
Weberman then laments that he doesn’t have a way to advocate for himself while stuck behind bars.
“I’ve been trying to appeal three or four times, that’s not normal,” Weberman said. “What am I left to believe? Am I supposed to believe that I’m never getting out of here? No.”
In another article, Weberman said, “I’ve accepted that God put me through this for reasons that I can’t understand.”
“Even though I’m wrongfully accused, I think one day, I’ll be out,” Weberman said.
Throughout many of the articles, Weberman is called many honorific names, including “a tremendous Hasid” and “shlita,” an acronym reserved for revered members of the community.
Leifer said that there are sexual abuse survivors within the community who are “beside themselves and disturbed by how this guy is lionized and idolized.”
“Sex abuse victims feel hurt and betrayed by this behavior,” Leifer said. “There is sort of a widespread undercurrent in the haredi community that we don’t do a good job with sex abuse, in terms of exposing it, preventing it, or helping victims.”
A Hasidic community member in Williamsburg who is close with the Weberman family told the New York Jewish Week that “no one really knows what happened behind closed doors,” referring to the abuse charges.
“It’s a pity that he’s been in jail already for such a long time,” the community member said.
The source added that Weberman, 64, is now “an old, broken man, with a family who suffers.”
“The community felt like he didn’t have a fair trial,” the source said. “If it really happened, he’s no longer a threat, that’s for sure.”
The source also said that according to Weberman’s family, the convicted felon is being kept in “inhumane” conditions. “There’s no air conditioning, no heat, no TV, it’s freezing,” the source said. “I’m not sure why we are not allowed to give a voice to someone who is inhumanely treated.”
David N. Myers, co-author of “American Shtetl,” a 2022 book about the Hasidic community of Kiryas Joel, told the New York Jewish Week that Teitelbaum may have visited Weberman in prison due to the rabbinic principle of “pidyon shevuyim,” which translates to “liberating captives.”
“Haredi Jews take this principle seriously,” Myers, a professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote in an email. “There is a strong ethos of providing assistance to and seeking the release of fellow observant Jews who are incarcerated — often on the presumption that they, as good Jews, must have been treated unfairly or imprisoned under false pretenses.”
Myers added that there is a growing sense among haredi Orthodox Jews that they are under siege by the media and secular authorities. He noted the community rage over a New York Times investigation in September that reported on Hasidic schools that are not meeting New York State standards in secular instruction.
“Many New York-area haredim feel under siege,” Myers said. “To be sure, the Weberman case precedes this new wave. He has always had some supporters, as well as many accusers and critics. But the current moment is one in which people in the haredi world feel greater liberty to say that the media are biased against them.”
In August 2021, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez wrote to then Governor Andrew Cuomo and asked him to commute Weberman’s sentence. (By then, Weberman’s sentence had been cut in half under a state law that requires a maximum of 50 years for the type of felonies for which he was convicted.) Gonzalez had long sought leniency for people with lengthy prison sentences, but local activists said his request smacked of politics.
Cuomo, who resigned in August 2021 amid a sexual harassment scandal, did not respond to Gonzalez’s request.
—
The post Satmar Grand Rebbe visits convicted sexual abuser Nechemya Weberman in prison appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Pro-Israel Group Issues Slate of Democratic Endorsements in US Congressional Races
Supporters of Democratic Majority for Israel. Photo: Screenshot
A leading pro-Israel Democratic organization is stepping into a series of competitive US House primaries, aiming to bolster candidates who it says can both defend the US–Israel alliance and help Democrats reclaim the majority in 2026.
The Democratic Majority for Israel’s political action committee, DMFI PAC, on Thursday unveiled its first slate of endorsements this 2026 election cycle, targeting nearly a dozen open-seat and battleground contests across the country. The move underscores how support for Israel remains a defining issue within a party navigating internal divisions over Middle East policy.
Among the most closely watched races are several swing districts seen as pivotal to Democratic hopes of flipping the House from Republican control. In Colorado’s 8th District, state lawmaker Shannon Bird secured the group’s backing. In Pennsylvania, endorsements went to Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti in the 8th District and former television anchor Janelle Stelson in the 10th.
The PAC also threw support behind former Rep. Elaine Luria in Virginia’s 2nd District, a perennial battleground seat, and Texas candidate Johnny Garcia in the 35th District.
In addition to those high-profile contests, the organization endorsed a group of candidates running in open or crowded Democratic primaries, including Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller in Illinois, former Rep. Melissa Bean also in Illinois, Maryland candidate Adrian Boafo, Michigan state Sen. Jeremy Moss, New York contender Cait Conley, and New Hampshire Democrat Maura Sullivan.
DMFI leaders say the endorsements reflect a dual strategy: reinforcing Democratic support for Israel as a key democratic ally in a volatile region, while elevating candidates viewed as broadly electable in general elections. The group argues that backing Israel’s security and right to defend itself against terrorist threats is consistent with Democratic values and national security priorities.
“These endorsements reflect our belief that supporting Israel and winning elections go hand in hand,” said Kathy Manning, former congresswoman and DMFI PAC board member. “The US–Israel relationship has long been a bipartisan pillar of American foreign policy because it’s critical to our security and intelligence capabilities – and it remains a view shared by the majority of Democratic voters. DMFI PAC is proud to support candidates who reflect those values and who can help strengthen the Democratic caucus in Congress.”
The announcement comes as debates over US policy toward Israel and Gaza continue to animate Democratic primaries. While some progressive lawmakers have pushed for new conditions on US aid and have condemned Israel’s military operations in Gaza, pro-Israel advocates maintain that steadfast support for Israel strengthens both American strategic interests and the party’s standing with moderate and swing voters.
In the two years following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in Israel, the relationship between the Jewish state and the Democratic Party has deteriorated dramatically. Overwhelming numbers of Democrats indicate a negative perception of Israel in polling. Moreover, recent surveys have shown a supermajority of Democrats claim that Israel has committed a “genocide” in Gaza, a narrative that Israel vehemently rejects and of which there is little substantiation.
Further, the cratering support for Israel among Democratic voters has caused many liberal politicians to distance themselves from Israel-aligned organizations such as DMFI and AIPAC, the preeminent pro-Israel lobbying group in the US.
“Winning back the House requires Democrats to nominate candidates who can build broad coalitions and win in November,” said Brian Romick, chair of DMFI PAC. “These endorsements reflect that reality. DMFI PAC is the only organization focused on electing Democrats to the majority while also ensuring pro-Israel Democrats can win in competitive primary and general elections.”
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Dear internet: Having Jews in movies isn’t ‘Zionist propaganda’
There’s a joke in Blazing Saddles, about an event that took place several thousand years ago, that maybe hasn’t aged so well.
It’s in the scene where Harvey Korman’s conniving Attorney General Hedley Lamarr brainstorms plans to clear away the town of Rock Ridge. Lamarr’s lackey Taggart, played by Slim Pickens, makes a modest proposal: “We’ll kill the firstborn male child in every household.”
Lamarr considers the idea, before dismissing it. “Too Jewish,” he says.
When I heard that quip in a recent rewatch with my girlfriend (her first time), I saw a new reason why you couldn’t make the film today: Modern audiences, particularly those amateur critics itching to sound off online, seem to have more fluency in blood libels about Jews than the Passover narrative Mel Brooks and Co. were riffing on. For those who think the Epstein files contain damning proof of elites eating babies, “too Jewish” might seem like an admission. For the many more who look upon Zion as the source of the world’s ills, a misreading of the gag would likely go viral.
True, Blazing Saddles was made in 1974, well before the recent carnage in Gaza. But I could imagine the rejoinders — “Israel has been killing kids since 1948!”
I put the “too Jewish” joke out of mind for a bit. I decided I was overstating just how wrong people on the internet could be. And then I encountered a post on X. It was responding to a screenshot from Marty Supreme, where the title character presents his mother with a chunk of the pyramids. “We built that,” he says.
“This is Zionist propaganda,” an eagle-eyed netizen wrote, to the tune of nearly 96,000 likes, 11,000 reposts and 7 million views. The self-professed “archeology (sic) major” took the occasion to correct this humorous expression of the collosal self-regard of an antihero ping-pong hustler with proof that this particular Wonder of the World was the work of well-respected Egyptian craftsmen and so (somehow) invalidates the Jewish national project.
Someone else said the film, which nowhere mentions Israel, was Zionist. A Letterboxd review is terse in its description: “if the spiritually Israeli term was a movie.”
This failure to grasp Jewish references that have their own ontology — or the desire to graft more recent ones onto them — is becoming a theme.
Last year, The Brutalist, was mired in a debate about whether or not its subplot about the newly formed Jewish state was an endorsement or indictment of national ambitions in the Levant. (In entering this particular fray, most missed the point: Recent survivors of the Holocaust discussed and argued about Israel, some moved there, others didn’t and a film can present this reality without offering a judgment either way.)
When I see these takes, I beat my chest as if performing viddui over the death of media literacy.
As a critic for a Jewish publication, whose remit is to read deeply into even the most tenuous of Jewish subtexts, this pains me. Not because I myself have offended (though perhaps I have), but because I take the work seriously and try my hardest not to impose on art something that just isn’t there. I’m reminded of Freud’s famous remark: “Sometimes a cigar is a phallic metaphor for Jewish domination on stolen Palestinian land.”
Sorry, that wasn’t it at all, was it?
What the terminally online crowd often mean to say when they shout “Zionist propaganda” is “there are Jews in this!” It’s not a great way to interpret art, and it undermines the legitimacy of the argument that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism. But a film need not even have Jews in it for some to claim it’s really about Israel.
My colleagues and I have written about how Dune, Superman, and Zootopia 2 have been seized by the internet as part of the monomyth of Israeli villainy. When people make these connections, they may believe they’re thinking deeply, but they’re really just reaching for the nearest headline or playing to their own biases.
This insistence on Israel as the ultimate Big Bad reminds me of a remark made by Denise Gough, an actor in the Star Wars series Andor (another property said to be about Israel-Palestine, even though the creator Tony Gilroy mentioned numerous historical inspirations, most directly the Wannsee Conference). In an interview, Gough said a fan sent her a Star Wars analogy, which she said she only half understood.
The fan argued that just as the Death Star, a planet-destroying weapon, has an Achilles’ heel in its exhaust port, that when fired at explodes the whole thing, the conflicts of the world have a focal point in Palestine from which the architecture of oppression can be demolished.
“If we can free Palestine,” Gough concluded, “it explodes everything.” “Everything,” here, being unrelated atrocities in Sudan, Congo and Nigeria.
Let’s leave aside the fact that Gough, an actor in a Star Wars property, is somehow unfamiliar with the most iconic scene in the franchise, and what that level of research might connote for her understanding of the dynamics of the Middle East.
What she is really demonstrating, when she mentions other countries rocked by violence, is something much scarier: how the conspiratorial, magical thinking that all wrongs lead back to Israel — and that everything is a metaphor for it — echoes tropes of Jewish control and is ultimately an excuse for an exclusive fixation. Turn off the targeting computer that acknowledges complexity. Use the force, Denise! Get rid of the Zionist entity, every other crisis will sort itself out!
And so, I worry that Jewish stories — or even jokes — will stop being seen outside of a context of Israel’s actions and that metaphors and allegory will lose their elasticity, all looping back to a unified theory of evil Jews. Not for everyone, but for enough people to make a difference.
The Jewish story is textured, complex and anything but unified. Marty Supreme, The Brutalist and Blazing Saddles, each make this case. Those who see only one narrative not only miss the plot, they miss out on what good art does best.
The post Dear internet: Having Jews in movies isn’t ‘Zionist propaganda’ appeared first on The Forward.
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France Moves to Criminalize Anti-Zionism Amid Surging Wave of Antisemitism Targeting Jews, Israelis
French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu delivers a speech at the National Assembly in Paris, France, Jan. 20, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Sarah Meyssonnier
The French government is moving to criminalize anti-Zionism in a sweeping bid to confront a deepening surge in antisemitism targeting Jews and Israelis across the country, as officials warn of a growing climate of fear and intimidation nationwide.
Speaking at the annual gathering of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF), the main representative body of French Jews, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu announced that the government would introduce a bill criminalizing anti-Zionist expressions, signaling a move to tackle antisemitism in all its forms, not just traditional manifestations.
“To define oneself as anti-Zionist is to question Israel’s right to exist. It’s a call for the destruction of an entire people under the guise of ideology,” the French leader said.
“There is a difference between legitimate criticism of the Israeli government and rejecting the very existence of the Jewish state. This ‘blurring’ must stop,” he continued.
“Calling for the destruction of the State of Israel is calling to endanger the lives of a people and cannot be tolerated any longer,” Lecornu added. “Hatred of Jews is hatred of the Republic and a stain on France.”
The European Jewish Congress (EJC) commended Lecornu’s announcement, praising him “for his clear and principled commitment to criminalize calls for the destruction of any state, including Israel.”
“Calling for the destruction of the State of Israel is calling to endanger the lives of a people and cannot be tolerated any longer”
We commend
PM @SebLecornu for his clear and principled commitment to criminalize calls for the destruction of any state, including Israel. pic.twitter.com/dvCd2iMtUB
— European Jewish Congress (@eurojewcong) February 20, 2026
During the ceremony, CRIF president Yonathan Arfi warned that Jewish communities in France are under mounting threat, stressing the urgent need for action against the country’s rising antisemitism.
“Antisemitism knows no truce. The conflict in the Middle East has acted as a catalyst. But the hatred growing in our country is a French problem, and there is no reason to expect a rapid decline,” Arfi said.
In April, the French government is expected to endorse a private bill proposed by Jewish Member of Parliament Caroline Yadan, who represents French citizens abroad — including thousands living in Israel — with backing from right-wing parties likely ensuring the majority needed to pass the legislation.
Yadan explained that the bill is designed to combat emerging forms of antisemitism, emphasizing the urgent need for stronger legal measures to protect Jewish communities in France.
“This is a clear statement: Our Republic will not become accustomed, will not look the other way, and will never abandon the Jews of France,” the French lawmaker said.
« Il faut une étape supplémentaire : appeler à la destruction d’Israël, c’est appeler à la mise en danger de tout un peuple. »
Je remercie le Premier ministre @SebLecornu d’avoir annoncé, ce soir, lors du dîner du @Le_CRIF, l’examen, en avril prochain, de ma proposition de loi… pic.twitter.com/hruoRSP5iE
— Caroline Yadan (@CarolineYADAN) February 19, 2026
Like most countries across Europe and the broader Western world, France has seen a rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
According to the French Interior Ministry’s annual report on anti-religious acts, antisemitism in France remained alarmingly high last year, with 1,320 incidents recorded across the country.
Although the total number of antisemitic outrages in 2025 fell by 16 percent compared to 2024’s second highest ever total of 1,570 cases, the report warned that antisemitism remains “historically high,” with more than 3.5 attacks occurring every day.
The most recent figure of total antisemitic incidents represents a 21 percent decline from 2023’s record high of 1,676 incidents, but a 203 percent increase from the 436 antisemitic acts recorded in 2022, before the Oct. 7 atrocities.
Even though Jews make up less than 1 percent of France’s population, they accounted for 53 percent of all religiously motivated crimes last year.
Between 2022 and 2025, antisemitic attacks across France quadrupled, leaving the Jewish community more exposed than ever.