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Antisemitism group keeps board member who emailed Epstein on the legality of transporting minors for sex
A lawyer who emailed Jeffrey Epstein on the legality of transporting minors across state lines for sex remains on the board of a group focused on combating antisemitism in higher education, months after his communication to Epstein became public.
Mitchell Webber is on the board of the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and has been involved in litigation on behalf of Jewish students.
Now new documents released as part of the U.S. Department of Justice’s massive trove of documents relating to the late Epstein’s prosecution for sex trafficking shed light on Webber’s role, working with attorney Alan Dershowitz, in helping Epstein reach favorable deals with prosecutors in connection with investigations into reports that Epstein had sexually abused underage girls.
Webber’s emails to Epstein were first revealed by Bloomberg in September.
“The question is: what would happen if one were to transport a minor for sex — or transport oneself with the intent to have sex with a minor — into a state in which the age of consent is below eighteen (assuming the minor is above the age of consent in the given state)?” Webber wrote in a June 2006 email to Epstein that Bloomberg obtained, which appears to follow up on a phone call. “And your intuition was right. The answer is that there is no violation of law.”
“let’s also look at sex tourism laws,” Epstein later replied. “going someplace with specific intent ot [sic] have underage sex.”
Webber, then a Harvard law student working as a research assistant to Dershowitz, was helping defend Epstein as local police investigated allegations that Epstein had paid a 14-year-old girl for a massage.
Webber told the Forward in a statement that, in his capacity as a research assistant after graduating law school, he “occasionally did research, took notes, and emailed clients on Professor Dershowitz’s behalf. Professor Dershowitz did not use a computer and relied on his administrative assistants and research assistants to email for him.”
He added: “Jeffrey Epstein never asked for my legal opinion or advice. I never provided my legal opinion or advice to Jeffrey Epstein. I only relayed advice from his counsel, Professor Dershowitz.” Webber also said that he never met or socialized with Epstein.
When asked by the Forward about Webber’s account, Dershowitz responded in an emailed statement that he has never used a computer, and that Webber’s email to Epstein “represent[s] my words not his. I would never advise a client to transport anyone for improper purposes. To suggest such a thing would be defamatory and wrong.”
He added, “Webber did research under my direction. I would provide him my interpretation of the law and ask him to find cases that support it. This research was directed exclusively to Epstein’s past conduct as part of my 6th amendment role in defending E against allegations of past misconduct. It had absolutely nothing to do with advising him about future or then current conduct.”
The case ended in a favorable plea agreement for Epstein, and billing records that were part of the new Justice Department release show $21,728 paid to Webber as part of the Dershowitz legal effort. That amount matches the total attributed to Webber in an email to Epstein from Epstein’s accountant in 2009.
In his statement to the Forward, Webber said he “never billed Jeffrey Epstein” and “was never paid by Jeffrey Epstein.” Dershowitz said he paid Webber for his research, “as I did all my research assistants.”
Dershowitz also said he did not recall Webber ever meeting with Epstein. And he bristled at the focus on his former assistant: “Webber did nothing wrong and to suggest otherwise because he did research on a controversial case is pure McCarthyism,” Dershowitz said.
Webber, a partner at the law firm Paul, Weiss — which reached a $40 million agreement with the Trump administration in March that included providing free legal work related to antisemitism — joined the Brandeis Center board in 2021 after prominent roles in the first Trump administration and has represented the organization in litigation on behalf of Jewish college students who say they faced discrimination on campus.
He has also lectured for the Brandeis Center on “defining bias.”
The Brandeis Center, which states that its mission includes “the pursuit of justice for all peoples,” did not respond to an email and voicemail asking about its knowledge of Webber’s work for Epstein and whether the recent revelations would impact his role on the board.
In the mix
The newly released documents illuminate Webber’s role in navigating toward the favorable deal between Epstein and federal and state prosecutors in 2008.
Local police had originally referred the case to FBI, which concluded that Epstein had abused more than a dozen teenage girls over a six-year period and recommended 32 federal charges. In 2007, however, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in southern Florida agreed to drop those charges and grant Epstein federal immunity in exchange for him pleading guilty to two state-level offenses. Epstein ultimately served 13 months in a minimum-security jail, where he was permitted to leave for up to 12 hours a day for work.
Emails and depositions depict Webber as part of the defense that negotiated Epstein’s agreement — taking notes for Dershowitz, researching legal strategy, and at times communicating directly with Epstein himself.
According to an internal FBI report included in the DOJ release, a confidential informant told FBI agents that Webber spoke “all the time” with Ghislane Maxwell, who was later convicted of child sex trafficking related to her work with Epstein, during the plea deal negotiations.
“Webber would be a good person to talk to who would have useful information about Maxwell,” the FBI agent who interviewed the informant wrote.
“No matter what happened between Epstein and his masseuses, the fact that they kept coming back militates powerfully against any sort of pressure on Epstein’s part,” Webber wrote in a November 2006 email that appeared in Epstein’s inbox, as published by Bloomberg.
In a 2016 deposition released by the Department of Justice, Dershowitz recalled attending a meeting with the Florida state attorney’s office, which was prosecuting Epstein for sex crimes, where he said Webber was present.
Webber “had done some of the research for me on the case,” Dershowitz said. The meeting had the goal of showing that others accused of similar sex crimes to Epstein had not been sentenced to prison. Dershowitz said Webber took notes at the meeting but did not participate.
In another document included in the DOJ release, Dershowitz responded to what appeared to be a journalist’s questions about allegations that Dershowitz visited Epstein’s Palm Beach home while several nude girls were present, and that one was forced to have sex with him on another occasion on the island of Little St. James. Dershowitz denied the allegations, writing in the document that he had only visited a handful of times — including once when Webber accompanied him to Epstein’s Palm Beach home while working on the case.
Webber later advocated for Dershowitz as he faced allegations of sexual assault from Epstein victim Virginia Guiffre, including in a 2015 letter to a National Review journalist supporting Dershowitz’s defense. Dershowitz sued Guiffre for defamation, and she later dropped her claims, saying she may have “made a mistake” in accusing Dershowitz.
From Dershowitz’s assistant to White House
As a student at Harvard Law, Webber said Dershowitz inspired him to become a lawyer — and joked about his mentor’s confrontational style.
“Letters addressed to ‘Asshole, Harvard Law School’ get to him,” Webber told an audience at a Jewish National Fund event honoring Dershowitz in 2005, according to the Harvard Crimson.
Webber’s work for Dershowitz propelled him into elite conservative legal circles: He served as associate counsel and special assistant to President Donald Trump from 2019 to 2021, and in 2021 Trump appointed him to a five-year term on the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. That same year, Webber joined the board of the Brandeis Center, where he has also represented the group in litigation.
“We have worked with Mitch Webber for several years, and he is one of the best and smartest lawyers in the field,” Kenneth Marcus, the Brandeis Center’s founder and chairman, said after Weber was appointed to the board in 2021.
The post Antisemitism group keeps board member who emailed Epstein on the legality of transporting minors for sex appeared first on The Forward.
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The Yiddishist Yeshiva is open for registration
ס׳האָט זיך לעצטנס געשאַפֿן אַ נײַער סאָרט לייענקרײַז דורך פֿייסבוק, וווּ מע לערנט תּורה אויף ייִדיש צוזאַמען.
אינעם לייענקרײַז, וואָס הייסט „די ייִדישיסטישע ישיבֿה“, לייענט מען חומש מיט רש״י — סײַ אויפֿן אָריגינעלן לשון־קודש סײַ אויף ייִדיש־טײַטש. „די גרופּע איז אָפֿן פֿאַר אַלע מינים מענטשן,“ האָט דערקלערט דער לינגוויסט און ייִדיש־אַקטיוויסט לייזער בורקאָ, וועלכער האָט אָרגאַניזירט די גרופּע. „פֿרויען און מענער, ייִדן און נישט־ייִדן, געי און ׳גלײַך׳. נײַע תּלמידים דאַרפֿן פֿאַרשטיין ייִדיש גוט, אָבער זיי דאַרפֿן נישט האָבן קיין תּורהדיקן הינטערגרונט.“
די גרופּע טרעפֿט זיך יעדן דינסטיק דורך פֿייסבוק. נאָך מער פּרטים אָדער כּדי זיך צו פֿאַרשרײַבן, שטעלט זיך אין קאָנטאַקט מיט בורקאָ, אויפֿן אַדרעס leyzertag@gmail.com אָדער דורך פֿייסבוק.
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A century-old Jerusalem photo album sparks search for forgotten images of the Western Wall
(JTA) — When David Freedman discovered a long-forgotten photo album in his parents’ Montreal basement last year, he found nearly 100 pages of century-old photographs from his grandfather’s year in British Mandate Palestine, capturing Jerusalem street scenes, market stalls and holy sites.
The photographs were not only century-old and in near-perfect condition, but included figures who would later become central to Jewish medical and political history, among them Israel’s future first president Chaim Weizmann, Jerusalem ophthalmologist Abraham Ticho, malaria researcher Israel Kligler, future British prime minister Winston Churchill and Herbert Samuel, Britain’s first high commissioner for Palestine.
David Freedman said he knew he had “struck gold” when he found the album, which had been untouched for decades. “I realized in disbelief I was looking at extraordinary images of Jerusalem,” he said.
Though Freedman said the album showed his grandfather’s “passion for skillful, impromptu photography,” it was images of a site that epitomizes endurance that are having the broadest impact.
Freedman’s pictures of the Western Wall has inspired a public appeal by the Tower of David Jerusalem Museum, which is asking people to look through old albums and attics for photographs, postcards and other visual material that could help expand the historical record of Judaism’s holiest site.
The request comes ahead of a major exhibition opening in 2027 marking 60 years since the 1967 Six-Day War brought the wall, known in Hebrew as the Kotel, under Jewish control for the first time in nearly two millennia.
Although the Western Wall is now one of the most photographed sites in the world, museum curators say the visual record of earlier decades remains surprisingly fragmented, with many of the most intimate images likely still tucked away in private collections and family albums.
“The Western Wall, the Kotel, in its simplest form, is a structure of ancient stones. Yet its true meaning has never resided in the stones alone — it has been shaped and elevated by the countless individuals who have stood before it over the centuries,” Eilat Lieber, the museum’s director and chief curator, said in a statement.
Next year’s exhibition, titled “Eyes on the Wall” and curated by Shimon Lev and Yael Brandt, will be the first large-scale exhibition dedicated entirely to the Western Wall, the museum said, and will trace its transformation over nearly 2,000 years. It will be one of the major exhibitions staged by the Tower of David Museum since it reopened in 2023 after a $50 million renovation of its ancient citadel complex.
The wall, the exposed section of an ancient retaining wall around the Temple Mount, the site of the biblical Jewish temples, has long been Judaism’s most sacred places of prayer and pilgrimage. From 1948 until the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel captured the Old City and East Jerusalem from Jordan, Jews were barred from going there.
Among its most iconic images was David Rubinger’s photograph of three Israeli paratroopers standing at the wall shortly after its capture, looking upward in a mixture of awe and disbelief. The picture was taken 59 years ago this week.
Abraham Orkin Freedman, a Canadian physician and Zionist activist, took his photographs before the site was so contested. He arrived in Palestine in July 1920, just as Britain was replacing military rule with a civil administration, and stayed until 1922, serving during that period as managing director of Hadassah Hospital. His grandson David, also a doctor, said the album’s timing gives it much of its historical value, with photographs that capture people in the streets, as well as the terrain and buildings of Jerusalem during the nascent years of the British Mandate.
Among the images Freedman uncovered, the one that struck him most was a photograph of women praying side by side with men at the oldest part of the Western Wall, a scene far removed from the gender-separated prayer sections at the site today. The question of mixed-gender prayer at the Wall remains politically charged, with a recent High Court order to advance the egalitarian section followed by Knesset moves to strengthen Chief Rabbinate control over prayer at the site.
After recognizing the album’s significance, Freedman met with his family who decided collectively to give it to the Tower of David Jerusalem Museum for safekeeping, research and public access. Freedman said the family was proud the album had found “a new home, not many meters from where my grandfather once stood.”
Lev said he hoped the appeal would bring more discoveries like Freedman’s into public view, expanding the visual record of the Western Wall beyond official archives.
“There is something profoundly moving in the moment when an intimate private photograph transcends its original purpose and becomes an important historical testimony,” Lev said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post A century-old Jerusalem photo album sparks search for forgotten images of the Western Wall appeared first on The Forward.
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5th man charged in March arson of London’s Hatzola ambulances
(JTA) — Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service announced Tuesday that an 18-year-old man has been charged in connection with the March arson attack that destroyed four ambulances owned by Hatzola, a Jewish volunteer emergency service.
Subhan Ahmed, a British national, was charged on Monday with “assisting an offender” in connection with the arson.
The ambulances were set ablaze in the early morning of March 23 in Golders Green, a heavily Jewish neighborhood in London. The incident spurred increased patrols in Jewish communities.
The charge is the latest development in an investigation being led by the Metropolitan Police’s counter-terrorism unit.
Four others have already been charged in connection with the attack.
Three British nationals — 20-year-old Hamza Iqbal, 19-year-old Rehan Khan and 18-year-old Judex Atshatshi — along with a 17-year-old dual British and Pakistani national were all charged in April with “committing arson, destroying or damaging property, and being reckless as to whether life would be endangered.”
The four have remained in custody ahead of a trial planned for January. Ahmed, meanwhile, was released ahead of a June 16 court date.
The ambulance arsons came at the early edge of a wave of incidents that have put London Jews on edge and induced the city’s police force to step up their presence in Jewish communities. The incidents have included multiple incendiary devices placed near synagogues as well as the stabbing in April of two Jewish men in Golders Green. The Metropolitan Police reported last week that antisemitic hate crimes in the capital rose 72% in May.
Following the announcement of Ahmed’s charge, the Community Security Trust, a Jewish organization, thanked the police and the Crown Prosecution Service “for their ongoing work investigating this attack and other arson incidents targeting the Jewish community.”
It added in a statement, “These are very serious allegations, and it is right that those responsible are being held accountable.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post 5th man charged in March arson of London’s Hatzola ambulances appeared first on The Forward.
