Jerusalem rabbi suspected of leading a sect and sexually abusing boys

Rabbi Menachem Yaveh, 51, was arrested this week. He is accused of leading a sect in Jerusalem and of sexually abusing boys who belonged to the sect. Yaveh is a student of Rabbi Eliezer Berland and the father of 17 children. At least four of Yaveh’s former students have filed a complaint with the police.

One of the witnesses said, “Yaveh was allowed to do anything, even the most despicable acts mentioned in the Torah. It could have gone on for nights, and I would not have eaten or drunk.” Pointing to the old apartments in Jerusalem where the acts took place, the student said, “The cover was to open a yeshiva, but he wanted workers to serve him.”

Mordechai (aka) claimed that Rabbi Yaveh sexually abused him. “He kept warning me, ‘You know you must never tell anyone in your life about this because something could happen to you. This is something I did only with you and for you, something I don’t do with anyone else.'”

He said Yaveh took him into the room while he was sitting, closed all the doors and told him his grandfather was “in very, very deep places in heaven because you sin.” The student said he was scared and felt like he was “going to die of shame.” After that, Yaveh told him he would make sure nothing happened to him. Yaveh then started hugging him and kissing him on the lips. “It was such a deep affection, he made me feel like I didn’t need anything in the world, that I only needed him. And that’s when the worst journey of my life began.”

Mordechai said the sexual offenses were committed “in the name of our holy Torah” and that Yaveh used verses from the Torah to justify his actions. According to Mordechai, “he constantly made me feel like I needed someone to support me and that I was dependent on someone. He simply took my innocence and exploited it for about four years.”

Mordechai said 80% of the acts were performed on him in the same room, which was “small, dark and scary.” He added: “I didn’t understand anything about sex and all that stuff, he just took me and said to me, ‘Tell me what else you like, what else you want.’ I told him, ‘We’ve already done everything,’ and he asked, ‘What else do you want me to do?'”

Mordechai added, “Menachem, let it be known that you have hurt my soul and ruined my life and that of my family. The evil you did to me has destroyed and trampled on my life. You ruined my life the day I realized that you were not righteous and were only using me for your personal interests. I know more people who have gone through this.”

Another witness, Tzachi Zeitlin, gave up his anonymity and said he studied at a Hasidic yeshiva in Mea She’arim. According to him, Yaveh hung out at the Hasidic Breslav synagogue and crowned himself a “true student” of Rabbi Berland. He claimed to have been brainwashed by Yaveh by spending “long hours of endless talking that creates dependency.” Zeitlin said, “Yaveh began the most severe sexual assaults in every form and manner,” he described. “My family found out there was a problem in that relationship, and they separated us at great expense.”

Moshe, who also waived his anonymity, said: “When I came into the room with him, he asked me: ‘Do you feel that I love you?’ Then he started kissing me on the cheek, and then it became kisses on the lips. He talked to me about intimate topics that I had no idea about. As a 14-year-old ultra-Orthodox boy, I should not be exposed to this.”

Moshe says: “He told me several times that he would pay me 2,000 shekels per man if I could get him innocent men who didn’t ask questions. At some point I asked myself: ‘Is this the rabbi who is supposed to guide you?'”

Nathan (pseudonym) said the rabbi was looking for 13-year-old boys because “at that age they have no opinions. He always said directly that he was looking for such boys, without any sense.” Another statement claimed that “he completely isolated the boys from their parents and their environment, slowly married them off and built a whole community around them.”

Another witness, Hodaya (alias), described how Yaveh gave his students huge pictures of himself as gifts after the wedding. “The goal was to look at him all the time and think about him, so that the children would become as righteous as he was. That they would think about him all the time,” she said.

The police said: “The investigation is ongoing. We will continue to investigate the allegations with due professionalism.” Yaveh continued to run the yeshiva during the investigation. The rabbi refused to comment on the investigation, but his wife claimed: “He is a righteous man who is being slandered.”