Published: 18 January 2018
Last updated: 4 March 2024
In 2014, a member of the Chabad community by the name of Menachem Mendel Levy, received a three-year prison sentence for the repeated sexual assault of Yehudis Goldsobel, who was aged 14 when the abuse began.
At his trial, the judges noted that Levy, a married father of six, was ‘arrogant and manipulative’ and that ‘no real remorse was shown,’ notwithstanding favourable character references, which were given by leading Chabad rabbis.
Last month, around a year after his release from prison, Levy donated a Torah scroll to Chabad of Golders Green run by Rabbi Yossi Simon. Levy was lauded in a major public community event which, according to reports from Chabad media outlets, was a ‘joyous’ occasion in which leading Chabad figures celebrated alongside ‘well over 1,000 men, women and children.’
Many of these same people have shunned Goldsobel and her family for speaking out about her abuse and pursuing justice against Levy. None of them thought for a moment that it was inappropriate to accept a Torah from a convicted sex offender or to celebrate his actions, let alone how Goldsobel would feel, seeing her abuser glorified in this manner.
FULL STORY When Chabadniks danced with a convicted sex offender (Times of Israel)
