The best tip I heard for planning a bar or bat mitzvah is to hope to have an average one. Of course, no one wants average or ordinary. But when you start off with the expectation that your bar or bat mitzvah is going to be special, you set yourself (and your child) up for failure. By lowering your expectations, you remove pressure and reduce stress.

With careful planning and a positive attitude, your celebration will be both successful and memorable.

Many families planning a bar or bat mitzvah these days want more than just a party. Long before choosing the bar mitzvah invitations, parents and kids are searching for a meaningful charity or study project. The projects usually culminate with a moving speech or video, which the child presents at the party.

Finding the right project can take time and patience. Here are a few questions you can ask:

• What are my child’s particular interests or skills? If the child feels that you are imposing your own project on her, everyone will end up frustrated.
• What can family members contribute to the success of the project?
• Will I need to enlist  help from outside the family?
• How much time, effort, and cost is required? Be realistic, and allow for flexibility.
• How will the project reflect your Jewish values and your personal values?

• Billy used a flip camera to film himself interviewing residents of a nursing home about their lives. He edited the film and charged admission to a showing and donated the proceeds to the home.
• Emory started a used book drive, collecting 2000 books for a “book bank” that lends out books to disadvantaged children.
• A bat mitzvah girl, who suffered from migraines, started a foundation to research migraines in children.
• Noa decided to get gifts for children in the local hospital, and got her classmates to help. You can see this video she made about the project:

• The father of  bar mitzvah boy Ofer had some training in Jewish calligraphy, so with some guidance from a sofer (scribe), he prepared his son’s tefillin (phylacteries). In the months leading up to the bar mitzvah the father and son learned the Jewish laws of tefillin, shopped for parchment in Bnei Brak, put the scrolls into boxes, and experienced the entire process. The video they showed about it was amazing.
• Rebecca taught her son Akiva to sew. He made mini-quilts that were later donated to the NICU where her twins had stayed after they were born.
• A more traditional project, easily adapted to a child’s interests, is study of Jewish texts. The child may choose the parshat shavua (weekly Torah portion read in the synagogue on the week of their birthday) or a longer text that can be studied over the months and years leading up to the bar or bat mitzvah from the Bible, Mishnah, Talmud or other Jewish source.
• Shmuel Yehuda loved to work with the modeling clay known as Fimo. So he molded figures and had them professionally photographed, using them to illustrate a Shabbat song book that was distributed at the Bar Mitzvah party. The production and marketing of the book became a family project.
• Genealogical projects are popular. The child researches the family history and reports on what he or she found. Sometimes the family takes a trip to the “old country.”

With a project like these, your guests, your family, and especially your child will create meaningful memories that will stay with them long after the  bar or bat mitzvah thank yous have gone out.

Have you or someone you need made an interesting bar or bat mitzvah project? Please share in the comments.

Update: I spoke with Shoshana Hayman of the Life Center, who has been meeting with the education ministry to address parents’ concerns about the new system.

First of all, only 5-year-old kindergarten is mandatory. 3 and 4-year-olds will have free preschool until 2 PM. There will be an option of an afterschool program until 4. Parents who wish to remove their children at 1 PM will be able to, with a note of explanation. “I want my children to have lunch with me  at home” is a good enough reason, not “I need to take my cleaning lady to the bus stop.” In other words, it should benefit the child.

According to Hayman, the education ministry does not see the long day (until 4 PM, or even until 2) as in the best interests of  children. But they are trying to meet the needs of working parents.

Hayman says that parents need to speak up to get better conditions for children in preschool. Two adults to 35 children is not acceptable. This is a much lower ratio than in any other comparable country.

Here’s the original post below. I removed the controversial paragraph about 8 hours of preschool for 3-5 year-olds, since that is going to be optional.

The government has promised to implement the law to provide free education and a long school-day to 3 and 4-year-olds next year, after the pressure of the summer social protests. Many parents are already complaining about the  longer day of gan.

The education ministry is scrambling to find staff for 1500 new kindergartens.  According to Haaretz (Hebrew), they plan to use students and recently retired teachers. One former teacher laughed and said she doesn’t think there will be many takers. While she loved every minute she worked, she’ll stick with retirement. She reports on  a shortage of qualified teachers in recent years.

The article also reports that the educational ministry asked teacher colleges to schedule classes for fourth-year “intern” teaching students in the afternoon, so they could work full time beginning in September. Intern Meital Cohen says that most fourth-year students and recent graduates work as fill-in teachers in one or more kindergartens, substituting for the main teacher one or two days a week. This way they get a feel for the job, without the responsibility of planning lessons, managing staff, and dealing with parents. Cohen started off this way, but got promoted when the main teacher died suddenly. She regrets taking the job, for which she was she was not fully prepared. Her studies have suffered.

The article did not address the issue of facilities—where will all of these new kindergartens be housed?  Current kindergartens have no cooking facilities, so lunch will be transported and remain unrefrigerated, which is already the case in some afterschool programs. And parents would also like children to have a place to rest.

Public kindergarten classrooms in Israel contain up to 35 children with one teacher and one assistant, in a stand-alone building with no backup. Add an inexperienced or older teacher, working six or seven full hours (8-2, or 8-3:30 in some locations), and you have a recipe for disaster.

But it’s good news for those of us with older children choosing a career. As a kindergarten teacher, they’ll never be unemployed.

You may also enjoy:

Mothering and the Teaching Profession

 Is a Long Day of Gan Good?

Thinking Outside the “Misgeret”: Childrearing Norms in Israel

It’s only Tu Beshevat, but the marketing for Purim is ratcheting up with advertisements for Purim costumes everywhere.

A week or two ago, Hadassah Margolese, mother of 8-year-old Naama of Beit Shemesh fame, opened a haredi weekly distributed for free in her building’s mailboxes. She was shocked to find an ad for Purim costumes, with the faces of the girls blurred out:

Margolese posted the scanned ad to the Red Pirate chain’s Facebook page. A message posted by Red Pirate claimed that they had no knowledge of the altered ad, which was commissioned by an agency. The original ad with the girls’ faces appeared in several local publications. The chain apologized, saying that they would not agree to their ads appearing in newspapers that do not publish pictures of women.

The uproar over this incident had barely died down when the women’s organization WIZO protested a “pornographic” advertising supplement. According to the Jerusalem Post:

The catalogue was distributed for free last weekend in national newspapers and is readily available in toy stores and shopping malls throughout the country.

It features 23 colorful pages of costumes for babies, young children and teenagers and seven pages of adult costumes. Of the adult costumes, the majority display various professions, animals or television characters and almost all include fishnet stockings, microscopic skirts and revealing tops.

One of the costumes, described in the catalogue as a “sexy cat,” includes a bondage mask and whip, while the “sexy policewoman” includes a latex bodice and handcuffs.

Some people say that one leads to the other and that haredi extremism is a backlash against the sexy way that women dress. Others believe that both extreme approaches demean women and turn them into sex objects.

Readers, what do you think?

Related:

Easy and Inspiring Purim Crafts

Easy Purim Costume Ideas

The Burka Wedding Pictures 

Last week in Australia, Caroline Lovell, a home birth advocate. died the day after childbirth. Blogger Mia Freedman reports on the story and adds:

When I went to look for information on the death of Janet Fraser’s baby during her freebirth, I found that all the threads on the freebirthing and homebirth forums that dealt with bad outcomes (including the death or injury of the baby or mother) were locked and not visible to the public who were only able to read the happy health birth stories.

So a blog reader caught my attention a few days later when she shared a link about the death of baby Magnus (pictured) in a birthing center. Some birthing centers that offer midwifery care are directly overseen by a hospital. But Magnus’s mother Sara only realized afterward that her son’s birth was the equivalent of a home birth, only in someone else’s home. There was no supervision at all, only a loose connection with an OB.

Sara and her husband became concerned because of the baby’s breech position at 38 weeks. Sara had thought that the birth center didn’t do breech births, but the midwives assured her it was perfectly safe:

I asked her specifically what she would do if indeed he did end up getting stuck and her reply was, “She’d have to get him out.” She told us that breech babies are, “Just a variation of normal and that as long as there wasn’t anything odd or troublesome that delayed labor, then we could have the baby there and not be transferred to the hospital.” That’s it. No discussion of what could go wrong, no indication that it could turn out in such a devastating way as it did. We did not fully understand the severity of risk we were taking on.

After reading Sara’s heartbreaking story, I decided to read the ten other entries in the blog, Hurt By Homebirth. The blog was founded by Dr. Amy Tuteur, a Harvard-educated obstetrician and well-known anti-home-birth activist. She started Hurt By Homebirth to give parents a chance to tell their stories, in their own words, in a safe place where they would not be attacked by home-birth advocates.

What shocked me about the homebirth stories is that in nearly every case, the baby’s death or injury was related to common factors like placenta previa or Group B strep. These conditions are generally prevented or treated with proper prenatal and obstetric care, but the midwives either overlooked the conditions or treated them with unconventional methods.  Also, the mothers and babies were not transferred to the hospital in time. Reading these stories illustrates how quickly things can go wrong. It appears that the quality of private midwifery care varies widely, and it’s difficult to get accurate information about a particular midwife’s qualifications and success rates.

As a blogger who has shared more than one story about poor care in hospitals, I believe it’s important to be aware of dangers of improper or incompetent care both inside and outside of hospitals.

As Sara wrote in a Facebook comment (using her husband Jarad’s account),

” . . . when you start talking about agendas and skewed statistics, it goes both ways. That was absolutely our experience with the extremist philosophies of our midwives that directly impacted our care in the face of crisis. It is also our experience trying to seek accountability through NARM and MANA. This is not a one sided issue, it is about defining a way in which families are not put in the middle of two opposing systems, but finding a way for them to work together for the best interest of all of us. Example: British Columbia, Netherlands who take licensing standards seriously, help their midwives be insured, and work both in and out of hospitals . . . and oh by the way, report their outcomes.”

Condolences to Sara and Jarad on the tragic loss of their son, Magnus. I hope and pray that sharing their painful story will lead to improved care for future mothers and babies.

Related:

Are Rabbis Too Strict about Birth Control and Abortion?

Covering Up as a Health Issue: A View from Sweden

Guest Post: Miracles of Motherhood

Photo by Yossi Eli, NRG

Last week a Beit Shemesh woman named Natalie Mashiach drove into Ramat Beit Shemesh Bet, an area occupied by extremist haredim. Dressed in a sweater and pants, Mashiach got out of her car to hang signs as part of her job for the national lottery. A group of men poured bleach on her and attacked her car with stones, breaking the windshield. They slashed the tires too. She was not injured, despite a rock being thrown at her head. But Mashiach was certain she was going to die.

She describes the attack in the video below (Hebrew).

It sounds like these residents intend to send a message to outsiders: Don’t go into our neighborhood. Of course the reverse isn’t true.  When there is a need for a medical specialist or a visit to the municipality, it doesn’t matter how many “immodest” women are on display.

Rafi’s post, Mashiach Isn’t Welcome in Ramat Beit Shemesh B, describes his encounter with the woman shortly after the attack.

Blogger Beth Frank-Backman of Jacob’s Bones focused on the fifty bystanders who did nothing to disrupt the attack.  She points out that street violence occurs all around the world, with women the most common victims. This article, The 3A’s of Street Harassment Disruption, discusses a common misconception about street violence: eliminating threats and eliminating risk are not the same:

In terms of sexual assault, risk management involves women taking specific actions and measures to reduce their own risk of being assaulted. But these actions do nothing to reduce the over all threat caused by Gender Violence. Threat management involves changing the culture of how women are perceived and treated in order to irradiate Gender Violence in society.

It is essential to understand the difference, and the relationship between threats and risks in order to make sense of the discussions that revolve around sexual assault victim blaming. The subject of victim blaming arises when people question what the victim did or did not do before the assault. But the entire debate that centers around blame and responsibility is the result of a misunderstanding of the concept of threat and risk management.

If we apply this distinction to Tuesday’s event, Mashiach could have lowered her risk by putting on a long skirt before stepping into Ramat Beit Shemesh B. But the threat would remain the same. Once street violence becomes acceptable in a community no one is safe, including the residents.  People don’t need a “good” reason to attack someone, especially the most vulnerable. Then everyone who has to walk on that street is terrorized.

The only way to stop street violence is to send a strong message that it won’t be tolerated, by residents and non-residents alike.

And of course, this same point applies to the pedophilia case in Jerusalem. Parents can try and reduce the risk of their child becoming victimized, but the focus must be on removing the threat.

More on Beit Shemesh:

Documentary on Beit Shemesh School Battle

Separate Sex Sidewalks and Civil Rights

Beit Shemesh School Battle

Please welcome Maya from How to Be Israeli for today’s guest post.

About a year ago, I left an anonymous comment on this blog. In response to the disturbing story about feticide at 40 weeks, I shared myown fears about prenatal testing here in Israel. When should I call my doctor to get his confirmation of the news I’d only discovered two days before, via two faint (and very welcome!) lines on a home pregnancy test? I didn’t want to go through the roller coaster of inconclusive early ultrasounds I’d experienced during my first pregnancy, the summer before.

Back then, at my first appointment, when I was still giddy, terrified, and freaked out that I had woken up with cramps the night before, my doctor had glanced at the ultrasound screen and said “There’s nothing in your womb.” Then he moved his wand a bit, squinted, and said, “Wait, no, there it is. But it doesn’t have a heartbeat.” This can be normal, he explained—often a fetal pole is invisible at five weeks, and my dates were probably slightly off. He drew his mouse cursor across the screen and measured the little black blob that I already thought of as my baby, and received an estimate of its age: four weeks five days. He sent me for a blood test and told me to come back in two weeks.

On to the roller coaster. The results of the blood test to confirm my pregnancy were great! Mazel tov! At seven weeks, we saw the flicker of a faint heartbeat! But the sac was growing slowly and was shaped irregularly, losing “days” every time it was measured.

Perhaps I should have known that something was off when my doctor still hadn’t sent me to any blood tests beyond checking my pregnancy hormones, but then I wasn’t yet familiar with the thirst of Israeli kupot cholim (health funds) for the blood of pregnant women. Besides, I had gotten pregnant my first cycle trying, and my mother had had four textbook pregnancies, so surely fertility problems and miscarriage were things that happened to other people. Stories on the site The Misdiagnosed Miscarriage helped convince me that what looked like a “blighted ovum” was no doubt a healthy baby nestled in a tipped uterus.

So I told everyone I was pregnant– my family, fellow board members of the Haifa English Theatre, the dressing room lady at Mango. I was convinced that I needed maternity clothes and loosened my belts. I bought plane tickets to fly to the US at the end of my first trimester and was sure I’d be “showing” by the time I returned from it. We concluded that my doctor was simply a negative person, delivering good news with the enthusiasm of Eeyore.

And then I went back to my doctor at nine weeks five days. Another ultrasound. No heartbeat, just a collapsed crescent moon with a smudge on it where my baby should have been, measuring just seven weeks along. The doctor diagnosed me with miscarriage after studying the ultrasound for five seconds. I grabbed the ultrasound wand and tried to make him look harder—my baby couldn’t be gone. I asked him for a referral to second opinion, which he printed out in a huff, telling me that he was the best doctor in the area and that if I used the referral, I should never come back to him.

Three days, and two ultrasounds from two different doctors later, I sat in the recovery ward of Rambam hospital, post D&C (Dilation and Curettage, the simple surgery that removes early pregnancies)—utterly, literally, drained. Not pregnant. “There will be no miracles here,” the last doctor had told me, before sending me in to surgery to vacuum out my womb.

So when I finally got pregnant again, six months later (after a delay caused by my emotional recovery more than my physical one), I dreaded that first ultrasound. I dreaded that limbo of not knowing, that “chetzi mazel tov” (half congratulations), those weeks of being told that probably everything was ok, or then again maybe not. We got the time wrong for our first appointment, so I sat in my new doctor’s office for three hours, heart pounding, preparing for the worst.

And then it happened.

I had waited until six weeks into my pregnancy for this first appointment, when every pregnancy website told me that there should be a heartbeat on the ultrasound. Instead, all we saw was a misshapen black blob, or maybe two black blobs, neither the size they should be, and neither containing anything that looked like even a yolk sac. My new doctor seemed as stricken as I was, and he searched for a long time to try to see something more clearly, trying different angles, pressing his hand on the outside of my stomach. He sent me for blood tests on consecutive days. While my hormone levels were very high, making a mistake in my dates almost impossible, they weren’t going up as quickly as they should have been– at this stage in pregnancy, they should have been doubling every 48 hours. Mine, on the other hand, were on track to double about every 30 days. I came in for a second ultrasound at six weeks and four days into my pregnancy, and left that appointment with a referral for a second D&C. At least this time I didn’t have to wait in limbo– I had a definite answer. Another “missed abortion.” (I never bled or lost all pregnancy symptoms in either of my pregnancies.)

This time, I decided to wait for the miscarriage to happen naturally. I went back to my normal life– drinking the occasional beer, going on a shallow scuba dive, running hard intervals. (I wasn’t in the mood to be gentle to my body.) This time, I was determined not to live in denial. The stories on that misdiagnosed miscarriage website convinced me that it was a good idea to wait for miscarriage at home, but that was the only concession I was willing to make to the tiny possibility that this pregnancy wasn’t over. I felt oddly free, no longer stressed that everything in my environment, including stress, was probably damaging my baby. I posted tearfully on miscarriage support forums online and tried to wrap my head around the scary world of multiple miscarriages. I felt oddly grateful for this long goodbye to my second baby.

Four weeks passed, though, and nothing happened– not even a cramp. The mild pregnancy symptoms that I thought had gone away in my sixth week seemed to be back. It was growing harder to tamp down that bit of hope. I called my doctor and set up an appointment, ready to think about “taking care of it” if we saw the same thing on the ultrasound.

As my doctor examined me, I focused on the gray curtain in front of the examination chair.

“Maya… do you realize what we’re looking at here?” he asked.

I turned toward the ultrasound screen.

There was a little gummy-bear-shaped fetus, measuring ten weeks one day, right on target. Even I could see her fiercely beating heart. As I stared at the screen, eyes welling up, I swear I saw her wave.

Why am I sharing this now, with my beautiful three-month-old daughter sleeping on my chest? Partly it might be a desire for vindication– see, commenters who told me that five-week or six-week ultrasounds weren’t inconclusive, I was right after all! Partly it might be because I’m still processing how lucky I feel that I didn’t use that referral to a D&C (though sorry, dad, but my baby’s story is not nearly as dramatic as Tim Tebow’s). And in a way I feel conflicted about telling my story, because reading stories of misdiagnosed miscarriage only fed my denial during my first pregnancy (though they might have saved my baby’s life during this one). I’m grateful for the prenatal care that we get here in Israel. I’m glad that I get to decide which tests to take based on my preferences, not my bank account. (Women in the US usually don’t get their first ultrasound until around week eight to 12 of their pregnancies, and thanks to the great expense of health care in the US, more women there wait for miscarriage to happen naturally than here in Israel, where the few people who knew thought I was crazy for not getting a D&C). I don’t know if I’ll pass up on early ultrasounds in (G-d willing) my next pregnancy, because I would probably drive myself just as crazy waiting for week 12 on my own. I don’t regret getting a D&C in my first pregnancy, because I’m fully convinced that pregnancy wasn’t viable.

But the thing about going through almost any kind of pregnancy twist is that you quickly find other women who experienced the same thing. As crazy as it is that my doctor told me my pregnancy was over in week six– when it really IS too early to be sure of what you’ll see on an ultrasound– I now know personally of three other women in Israel who were told something similar, thanks to early prenatal testing. Neither of my doctors volunteered the possibility that I could wait for miscarriage on my own. In 2010, misdiagnosed miscarriage made headlines in Ireland when a woman was told her pregnancy wasn’t viable and was given an abortion drug, only to discover a healthy baby when she sought out a second opinion. How often does this happen in Israel?

Misdiagnosed miscarriages are rare– far more rare than you hope they are when you get diagnosed with miscarriage. At the same time, they do happen, and they happen far more often when miscarriage is diagnosed before ten weeks, which happens far more often when women are lucky enough to get ultrasounds so early. Our healthcare system, which makes giving birth so inexpensive and easy, also makes ending a “nonviable” pregnancy inexpensive and easy. What would have happened had I gone to the hospital with that referral for a D&C? Would the final ultrasound before surgery (which I’m told sometimes doesn’t even happen) have caught a heartbeat or reason to wait? I’ll never know. But I do know that if I had gone to the hospital and they hadn’t found a reason to stop me from getting a D&C, I would be talking about my second miscarriage, not my daughter Nitsah. No matter how warm her body as she sleeps heavily against my right shoulder, that thought gives me chills.

Thank G-d that, sometimes, there are miracles here.

_________
Maya lives in northern Israel with her husband, baby daughter, and three cats. She is a full-time online English teacher and a some-time blogger at How to Be Israeli and Offbeat Mama. She may have been that crazy pregnant runner or that curiously thick-around-the-middle reporter onstage in the Haifa English Theatre show you saw last summer.

See also: Misdiagnosed miscarriage scandal in Ireland

Related posts:

Late Term Abortions in Israel

Genetic Testing in the Religious Zionist Community

Abortion in the Religious Zionist Community

Chana Jenny Weisberg of JewishMom.Com wrote this guest post in response to comments on this site and elsewhere criticizing the parents affected by the Nachalaot pedophilia tragedy as negligent. 

When parents hear that someone else’s child has been hurt, often their first response is to blame that injured child’s parents. In fact, that is probably the most natural response when tragedy strikes, since finding someone to blame is the most effective way for us to ease our own fears.

Blaming other parents allows us to tell ourselves: “This could never happen to MY child, because I’m a good parent, not like those NEGLIGENT parents whose child was hurt.”

While this is a very natural response, I would like to point out the reasons why it is a completely false accusation regarding the Nachalaot parents whose children were molested.

• Have you ever left your child in the care of a teenage babysitter or an older sibling? So did these responsible Nachalaot parents. But they didn’t know that the pedophiles had threatened the lives of their children’s teenage babysitters/older siblings if they didn’t bring them the young children they were caring for to be raped and severely abused.
• Does your child come home on his/her own from school or from a nearby school bus stop? So did the children of these responsible Nachlaot parents. But they didn’t know that the pedophiles were threatening their children returning home from their school or bus stop with death if they didn’t come to be molested before they went home. Upon arriving home late, the children would tell concerned parents that there was heavy traffic or that a teacher delayed them after school or other similar excuses.
• Have you ever rushed with a sick child to the doctor only to be told that it’s “nothing serious”? So did these responsible Nachalaot parents. In fact, for 6 years parents of the molested children were frantically taking their children to psychologists and pediatricians in an effort to figure out what was wrong with their terrorized and horrifically abused children. The psychologists and doctors repeatedly dismissed the parents’ concerns and assured them it was “nothing serious” just like your doctor told you.

I know many, many of the parents involved in this story. I know them well. I know them to be among the most devoted, most loving, most self-sacrificing, most responsible parents in the world.

I beg you, dear reader, to stop adding to the suffering of these struggling families by blaming them for something that could happen to any parent, even the most vigilant and responsible mother or father in the world.

I would like to add a few words to Chana Jenny’s post:

As parents, we can’t keep our children in a bubble. There is no age at which they will be able completely protect themselves against pedophiles, rapists, reckless drivers, and other dangers. By accompanying them everywhere until they are “old enough” (within reason, of course), we deny them opportunities to learn gradually how to manage difficult situations on their own. If we restrict them because of our (understandable) fear, our children would never take music lessons, join a sports team, ride a bicycle, or visit a friend—”just in case” something happens. Worst of all, we would frighten them into thinking that no one can ever be trusted. 

More on Nachalaot and child safety:

Nachalaot Pedophile Case: More than 100 Victims

Nachalaot Pedohpilia: Yisrael Hayom Report

Raising Kids Where Neglect Is Normal

Yisrael Hayom published this article about the children of Nachlaot. The residents of Nachlaot are anxious for it to be translated into English and published, and I have done so below.

See the previous article from Jerusalem Net: Nachlaot Pedophile Crisis: At Least 100 Victims

When I published the first article last week, a few readers felt that the parents should be taking better care of their children. While there may have been neglect—the article mentions parents who left smaller children alone—there is simply no way for parents to prevent sexual abuse completely.

Also see Chana Jenny’s guest post: Were the Parents of Nachalaot Negligent?

We wish much strength to all of the Jerusalem families who are suffering through this crisis, may it end soon.

Terror of the Children of Nachlaot

By Yehuda Shelzinger and Naama Lansky.  Translated by Hannah Katsman (amotherinisrael.com)

Dozens of children in the neighborhood of Nachlaot in Jerusalem have fallen victim in recent years to a cruel pedophile ring–the largest in the country’s history. The rapists would catch the children, attack them, and threaten them that they would kill them if they told. Victims included one-year-old babies. Three shocking indictments have been served, and three additional suspects were arrested this week. Yet some of the suspects are still walking free in the streets of Jerusalem: According to the police, it’s difficult to arrest them after the parents “tainted” the testimony by showing the children photographs of the suspects. In conversations with “Shishabat,” the parents tell of the moment when they discovered the horror, the terrible trauma, and how lives of complete families have been destroyed.

For years, the children of Oren (a pseudonym as are all names of parents in the article) would chew their clothes. Constant chewing, uncontrolled, of their shirt sleeves, collars, every piece of cloth that they can use to assuage their fears. Their fingernails were also chewed to the quick, with the skin underneath exposed. The children would burst into tears uncontrollably and without explanation, they lost control of their bladders and developed complete dependence on their parents—who for their part stood helpless against these extreme behaviors. Only last year did Oren realize that for three years, a regular visitor to his home sexually abused his children harshly. “For three years, apparently daily, my children did not know any other reality,” Oren recalls. “My wife recalled later that the abuser offered one of the boys a candy when he was 2.5. My son recoiled, his face went sour, and afterward he said to my wife, ‘Mother, I don’t want anything from this crazy person.’ According to what we now understand, at 2.5 he had already become a victim of these acts.”

And he wasn’t the only one. Dozens of other children, aged one year through elementary school age, were abused by this man and many others who cooperated with him. The police and welfare authorities say that it is the largest pedophile ring ever exposed in Israel. The details of the case are frightening and impossible to grasp; paper cannot bear most of them. The testimonies described below are only the tip of the iceberg of what has happened in one of the most pleasant areas of Jerusalem. And worse,  the families claim that at least ten of the men who brutally abused their children are still free.

Most of the events took place within the neighborhood of Nachalaot. The neighborhood includes haredim alongside “traditionally” observant Jews, young students alongside old-time city residents. At the end of  2010 a young couple found bite marks on their toddler son. The parents in the neighborhood relate to this shocking discovery as if it were a miracle–the first physical evidence that could help explain the parade of complaints and symptoms among the boys and girls of the neighborhood: Urinary tract and other infections,  incontinence, and especially terror, fear and introversion. The residents began to understand that someone walking among them was harming their children. They didn’t guess that they were talking about a much larger and intertwined group of pedophiles.

The parents of the toddler turned to the police and issued a complaint   of sodomy against B., a resident of the neighborhood.  B. was arrested and ordered held until the end of his legal proceedings, but the court decided to release him to house arrest. Six months later, in July 2011, the police received a complaint that B was involved in further acts, including against the children of Oren. Five additional suspects were arrested. Three of them, including B., were indicted for rape, sodomy, and indecent and violent acts against minors. The three others were released. In parallel, a special investigative committee of the police was formed. Seventy children were sent to the police center for child investigations in Givat Shaul (a Jerusalem neighborhood), and the center almost shut down from the overload. The children had to undergo questioning that often lasted for several hours, and sometimes repeatedly.

The content of the indictment is impossible to digest.  B. was accused, among other things, of showing the children pornographic movies, hitting them with sticks, touching their private parts and sodomizing them “until they cried in pain.” According to the indictment, two other men were present, and B showed them how to film the naked children during the sodomy. He threatened to murder the children if they told anyone.

Another suspect, BP, is accused of simultaneously abusing groups of boys and girls in his apartment, some of them siblings. He would warn them not to move even if it hurt. Afterward he would hit them and warn them that if they made noise he would hit them harder. He even wielded a knife and threatened to cut them if they talked. Z, the third suspect, was also present during one of the incidents, watching the events “for sexual satisfaction or humiliation” . In another incident, Z was present at BP’s home as well as “others”, all of whom ordered the children to perform sexual acts with each other in front of a camera. Afterward the children were threatened with a toy pistol, not to tell a thing. These are the easier details to read.

“I defended the crazy man”

Oren describes  how he used to bring B into his home, because he pitied him. “He seemed helpless to us, weak, and said he had no one in the world to talk to. I would listen to him for hours. My wife worried that the sweets he gave the children would hurt their teeth. And I said not to worry, it gives [B] a moment of satisfaction. We unintentionally provided shelter to the children’s attacker.  When my child said that B was crazy, I defended this crazy man and told [my son] it’s not nice to speak that way, because God didn’t give him what he gave us. Thus we confused the children even more, because they realized that their parents are defending the monster who attacked them each day. We thought he was a lazy bum, because he stood on [his] porch each day and watched what was going on. It turned out that during this time he studied our movements and schedules. When we once came home early, he asked my wife, ‘What, aren’t you working today?’ He always checked what was happening with us, and apparently made note of it all. He planned the big parties when we weren’t home. He wasn’t as limited as we thought.”

How did you discover that the children had been harmed?

“My neighbor told me that his son was bitten on part of his body. He came over to question me about whether there was something suspicious about B., who lived near us. I said that it didn’t seem to me that he was interested in children, and besides, he gave them sweets and played checkers with them. But we started questioning the children, and the stories began to come out gradually. For example, my child admitted that during the quarter-hour between stepping off the school bus and getting home—the distance of a couple of hundred meters—he would stop at the attacker’s home. My wife noticed that some of the children were still in a state of fear: for example, one of the children would start to tell us something, then his brother shouted at him trying to shut him up. He was afraid that B. would come and kill the whole family as he had threatened.”

As of now, the vast majority of the victims known to the police are children and toddlers from haredi families, but not all. This week the police arrested three additional men, some of them from the margins of society. According to the families, there are other men who are still walking free, some are not Jewish, and it’s actually among those men that the most frightening and violent acts were committed. And if that isn’t enough–the parents note that women also took part in the abuse.

The children who became victims, according to claims, were forced to drag their neighborhood friends, and their siblings, into the horror. A woman connected to the case relates: “They threatened a sweet 12-year-old girl who babysat for children in the neighborhood. They told her she needed to bring children each day to the attackers’ homes, or they would kill her whole family. She was deathly afraid, so she approached families of her own accord and offered to play with and watch their children—thus procuring them for the attackers. One day her parents found her under her bed, shaking in fear. It turns out that she wasn’t able to get any children to come that day. Thus her parents learned the story, and they feel terribly guilty, even though [their daughter] was also a victim.”

The Nachalaot neighborhood was quiet and desolate this week, especially the haredi section. During the noon hours, when children used to run and play in the enclosed yards, hardly a living soul could be found in the injured neighborhood. Colored go-carts hung from porch railings and small rusty bicycles leaned on gray tree trunks. Every few moments, faces peeked out from the windows: Men, women and children looked suspicious of every movement and of every voice, which are heard well in the close-down that the residents have imposed upon themselves. “The neighborhood is under house arrest, instead of the perpetrators being in jail,” said Gila, two of whose children, aged 3 and 5, were attacked. She walks along the lonely alleys and points to the houses: Here lives a family where four children were abused, here lived a family that was severely abused and abandoned the neighborhood after the story came out. At least three other families have left. “This mother,” Gila whispered about a woman she sees exiting her home, “all of her children were abused. All of them. Almost no family was skipped over. And here,” she says and stops in her place. “here lives a man who hurt my children and additional children, who told their parents that they were harmed by him in a terrible way. From what I understand, he was one of the leaders of the pedophiles. They arrested him but released him relatively quickly, because there is not enough reliable testimony against him.”

Gila pulls out pictures of two of her children, smiling from ear to ear. Under the picture of her small son it says, Who needs honey when you have me? “One Friday afternoon the children went outside alone, which was unusual.” she recalls. Sabbath and holiday eves, it should be noted, are days of danger, because during those times the mothers are busy with preparations. “The children told me that he waited for them outside, pulled down their underpants, and touched them. They returned home and said, ‘Someone did something immodest to us.’ I ran outside and saw him. I asked him. ‘Did you see someone or something?’ He shook his head no. And there it ended. For months, they never said it was him. Until he was arrested. Only then did they tell.”

Did they testify against him?

“I hope my daughter will testify, but in the meantime the psychologist doesn’t recommend that she go through this process. My son will testify, but his testimony is problematic—the things happened when he was 3, and now, at 4, his communication skills are limited. And in general he is not a big talker. He isn’t able to tell a story with a beginning, middle and end. It’s a vicious cycle. A man rapes a child of 3, and because a child of that age cannot testify properly—the perpetrator continues to walk freely around our home. By now we are very careful. We have lost our innocence. But what about the rest of the city? I know specifically that he walks around other places in Jerusalem, for instance Sacher Park. He doesn’t look suspicious, he works with children, and he also uses force when necessary. He offered my daughter a candy. She refused, and then he dragged her to the shed forcefully. He threatened her and others that he would come to their bedrooms at night and kill them if they say anything. Children are afraid of things like that. I am afraid of things like that.”

“Tainted” Testimony

Gila’s words join harsh criticism by parents directed at the welfare authorities and the police. According to them, the investigators of the children from the welfare ministry waited too long to begin collecting the testimony, and are still dragging their feet in dealing with the case.  The police too, according to them, took a long time before starting to act. “Everyone turned to the police. And you must understand: We are talking about people who never cooperated with the authorities, and who feared the police.” says Althea Steinherz, a therapist who is voluntarily helping the families. “We all went and cooperated. But I do not believe the police acted as they should have. They delayed, allowing those close to the suspects to clear evidence from their homes, and there are still people walking around among us that many children testify have committed terrible crimes against them.

The claims against the police ignore one significant fact: When the case was exposed in the haredi community, elements from within tried to solve the problem themselves, without involving the enforcement authorities. They activated the “Committee for the Purity of the Camp”, and a number of people were authorized to function as a “Modesty Patrol” and tried to fight the plague of pedophiles: They photographed the suspects and distributed lists with their names. The police had difficulty relying on the testimonies of the children, since in the professional jargon of the profession they were “tainted.” This complicated both the presentation of the evidence and the handing down of indictments.

“The attempt to solve the problem in their own way harmed our work,” say authorities involved in the investigation. “80% of the testimonies of the 70 children were destroyed.” Most of the complaints, claim the authorities, were filed at a late stage, after the community understood that they could not contain the phenomenon on their own. Thus dozens of complaints were issued simultaneously. As of now, the residents have been promised that security and surveillance in the neighborhood will be increased with both plainclothes and uniformed officers, and the municipality has added more lighting in the area.  As mentioned above, the parents insist that those who harmed their children are found not only within Nachalaot, but that they work and live in other areas in Jerusalem.

Oren is appalled by these statements. “They blame us for ‘tainting’ the investigations? Instead of guiding us in how not to harm the investigation, they simply left the story alone and allowed these events to continue. A man who seriously harmed my children and many others is free to do as he likes. He and his partners would organize groups of children and threaten them until they would bring their brothers and sisters. He threatened my children that if they talked, he would cut them into small pieces and throw them to the fish. He told other children that a girl who talked is buried under the floor tiles. He told the children that at night he turns into a dog and can get in anywhere and kill them.”

“The children told how he would hit them, push them against the wall with their hands up, and do as he did. They forced children to do things to each other. They forced children to watch sexual intercourse between men and women to demonstrate that see, it doesn’t hurt, no need to cry. My son gave detailed testimony against this man for two full hours. One must understand the price of these inquiries: Full days in which children become crazy. And in the end [the suspect] is released. Why? Because [the child] was asked in the investigation if he had eaten that morning and he said no. It seems that he drank [straight] from the bottle and knew that wasn’t allowed. His mother said that he did eat and drink, so his testimony was thrown out.”

The complaints reached MK (Knesset member) Uri Maklev (United Torah Judaism). Parents complained of “inappropriate treatment, indifference, and ignoring sexual attacks on dozens of children in Jerusalem, when this meant mainly abuse of members of the haredi population.” In light of this, MK Zevelun Orlev, head of the Knesset committee for children’s rights, called an emergency session or the committee last week. “There is no doubt that children paid a heavy price for the fact that the authorities did not act immediately with determination, and failed by not identifying this widespread and organized pedophile ring in time ,” said Orlev this week. “It pains me, especially since the haredi population in the neighborhood showed rare civil courage and exposed itself much more than expected. They cooperated, complained to the police, made contact with the welfare authorities. It pains me that the authorities failed. There aren’t enough child investigators. Dozens of children have not been questioned, and the families have not received enough guidance.”

On the issue of “tainted” testimony Orlev says: “We must consider changing [the law] regarding the reliability of investigations of children. It shouldn’t happen that parents who encourage their children to give testimony, or who learn in advance from the children what happened, harm the reliability of the investigation. This case exposed problems surrounding the questioning of children. And we are checking into this in the legal department.”

“I want to say that in this case there was no delay in the questioning of the children,” said Chana Slotzky, chief social worker for youth in the ministry of welfare and social services, to the committee for the rights of children. “Every investigation that needed to be done, was performed. Several investigations were done regarding each of the children.”

Attorney Eitan Lehman, who is representing some of the children’s families, says that “there is a built-in paradox. On the one hand, we are talking about a population that generally doesn’t cooperate with the police, doesn’t expose things, especially sexual things that have a very clear taboo. On the other hand, as soon as these families truly show bravery—expose what happened, come to the authorities, speak with the children—they are criticized: ‘You contaminated the investigation. We could have brought the perpetrators to justice, but you spoke with the children.’  There is hardly a file with more than one attacker and one victim, that is not tainted. There is no such thing. They always speak to each other, they always speak with their parents.”

Lieutenant commissioner Moti Levi, officer of the department of investigations and intelligence in the office of internal security, said at the session that “as far as the police are concerned, even if the investigation of the child was determined not to have been reliable, the story does not end there. The role of the police, its obligation, is to continue to investigate and to try to collect more testimonies, and to strengthen the ones taken by the child investigators.

Unimaginable threats

Many parents of abused children appeared before the committee on the rights of children. One after another, they painfully laid out what had occurred under their noses. “I am a mother of four abused children, some of them severely abused”, said Orly. “At the beginning we thought the neighborhood panic was exaggerated, until we heard from our own children the harsh descriptions that they are now letting out and letting out. From the moment they opened up they haven’t stopped talking, and for us it is hard to hear. We have lived in this neighborhood for five years, and during that time period all four of our children have been abused. They told us how they fell into a different trap each time: By the time they learned to beware of a particular house, the things occurred somewhere else. The stories are very difficult, by any measure. Immediately upon discovering the abuse, we filed a complaint with the police, and the children were called in for questioning. We also began watching our children very carefully. But we learned that our protection was not enough. I am talking about four children whom I accompany each morning and afternoon. Each child at a different time. For four months since the beginning of the school year I twice missed getting to them in time—and both times they were abused. It’s simply crazy.”

Shabtai Markovich, a man known in the community, to whom some of the families turned, noted in the committee session that keeping children at home and constantly accompanying them when they go out, is not enough. “The layout of the housing allows a stranger to grab a child from the house. I’m talking about things that happened. A mother goes out to bring a child from kindergarten or school, or to accompany one of the children. She comes home–and the [other] child is not there. Someone grabbed him and abused him.”

Batya, another mother, addressed the questioning of the children: “I went to the child investigators with my daughter every day. She testified exceptionally well. In the end they said her testimony was ‘tainted’ like those of other children. They claimed that what tainted the questioning was giving the child a present, since perhaps he testified only because of the gift. But if I hadn’t given her a present she wouldn’t have gone to testify at all. You can understand why a child would be embarrassed to tell an investigator, whom she doesn’t know, that someone took off her clothes in front of 20 people. If we hadn’t given gifts to the children, there was no chance of any questioning. I gave her ice cream and gifts and money, so that she would go to testify. I didn’t interfere with the content. I didn’t say, “I will give you a present if you say such and such.’”

“They also brought [the children] pictures of suspects, to confuse them completely: One who had black hair, suddenly had white hair. A fat one became thin. One has hair that was in a  ponytail—in the picture his hair was loose. At a meeting arranged for us by the police, they explained that they have no control over the pictures of the suspects as the defense lawyers bring them. And it’s clear to us that all of the investigators are convinced that the events occurred.”

“We brought pictures to the children to ask them, ‘Is this the man who hurt you?’ testified Gittit, 4 of whose 8 children were abused. “Without pictures we had no way of lodging a complaint. Against whom could we complain? There were dozens of figures: one named ‘black ponytail,’ another named ‘brown with glands’ and another called ‘white ponytail’ or ‘bald man.’ The police, unfortunately, did not do anything in order to identify those people, and we did not photograph them. We don’t know what to do. Photograph them? Yes or no? Search for them? Don’t search? Ask our children? Don’t ask? And meanwhile nothing was done. The children experienced all kinds of rape, and we’re not talking about things that one normally imagines. We are talking about objects, about terrible violence toward tiny children. A girl of 7 or 9 tells how, before her eyes, they raped a girl of two in the most violent way. The boy describes gang rape.”

Gittit describes the methods of frightening the children. ” A little girl cried ‘dog, dog’ for a whole year. So they said, ‘People in Jerusalem are often afraid of dogs.’ And what turned out in the end? They had brought dogs there, the size of people, taller than the children, and said, ‘Do you see this dog? He ate more than one child. Woe unto you if you tell.’ Or they lit a fire, burned a few small objects, and said, ‘Do you see this fire? We will throw every child who tells into the fire.’ Then we expect the children to share with us what is happening in the neighborhood? They lived, and continue to live, under these threats.”

“One of my sons won’t let me light a candle at home,” Oren says. “He didn’t participate in lighting the Chanukah candles, and begs his mother not to light Shabbat candles.”

“One man told the children that he walks between the buildings with a transmitter, so whenever a child tells, he immediately knows about it,” testified Dora. “Or they tied a child’s hands and legs, and the abuser took a knife, brought it to the child’s neck and said, ‘If you tell, one tchak and you’re finished’. One of the suspects spread powder on the floor, and my daughter developed  a rash all over her body. I didn’t know what it was. “I said to her: ‘What did you eat that gave you this rash? Did you go near some plants? Why do you have this rash? ‘ And she of course couldn’t tell me. It turned out that the abuser said to her that this powder will help him know if she told someone, and then he will make a hole in the ceiling, insert a fuse, and kill her.”

From some of the parents’ testimonies, it’s suspected that the abusers used chemical agents to influence the children. Gila’s 5-year-old daughter came home from preschool groggy and confused . . . She dropped off to sleep and when she eventually woke up she had behavioral problems that she hadn’t had before: She wet her bed and burst into tears at every little thing, almost without stopping. She became fearful and very dependent on her parents.” I thought that they gave her something to drug her that day. I asked, ‘Did they give you something to drink?’ At first she laughed confusedly. As if she had a secret that she was embarrassed about. Then she admitted that they offered her ice cream, she turned it down, and then they gave her something to drink.”

“The teacher of one of my sons said he is the saddest boy in the class,” says Oren with sad eyes. “He doesn’t participate, he doesn’t speak. In the meantime he does not control his bowels. We are tired of all this and just throw his dirty and soiled clothes into the garbage each day. Because I didn’t realize what was happening with my children in time, I am trying to think how to help other parents learn what happened to their children They need to notice attention or concentration problems that occur suddenly, with no obvious reason. Our children suddenly stopped paying attention to their surroundings, and one of them exhibited a delay in development. Another child’s hands started shaking; he was frightened and responded by defensive body language to every small shout or comment. As if he went into defensive mode. Bedwetting and loss of bowel control occurred in many children. The father of one of the children who was abused said that he never cried as much in his whole life as he did this past year. Myself as well. Small children, who could have gone far in their lives, must deal with traumas and difficulties. And there is no end in sight.”

Authors: naamal@israelhayom.co.il and yehudas@israelhayom.co.il

Responses:

Police: “The complaints were received long after the attacks”

Police spokesperson: “The police department completely rejects these claims. Immediately upon receiving complaints from several parents about the sexual assaults against their children in the neighborhood the police opened an investigation in cooperation with the child investigators of the labor and welfare ministry, and six suspects were arrested. Three of them were held until the end of the judicial processes, and were served indictments by the prosecution. The police are sorry that the complaints were filed so long after the sexual assaults, after the residents of the neighborhood tried to solve the problems on their own and caused serious difficulties in the police investigation and in the questioning of the children by the welfare ministry workers. Despite this, the police have continued the investigation and have arrested three additional suspects in recent days, who have been remanded, and the police will recommend that they be tried. In addition, Lieutenant Commissioner Nissim Edri, the commander of the Zion precinct, met with the welfare authorities from the municipality and the welfare ministry and the residents and updated them on the details of the case. Undercover and open surveillance of the neighborhood has been increased, to increase the feeling of security among the residents.”

Justice department: “The prosecution presented 3 indictments against those accused of involvement in the case. We are talking about a large and complex file that is being handled by the court at this time. Therefore, we cannot address the claims themselves. The prosecutor’s office acts in a professional and relevant way, with full understanding of the seriousness of the crimes in this case, and with full cooperation of the investigative and welfare authorities. The claims of apathy in handling the file have no basis in reality.”

Jerusalem municipality: “Immediately upon receiving the information, the social workers in the welfare department began to treat the families and to take action to treat the children. Expert therapists and private therapists accompanied the children and families closely. A plan was put in place with the education administration, the psychological services and the community administration, in order to protect the children.

Attorney Roi Politi, who represents the suspect B.: This is a Kafkaesque story, a witch hunt, that proves how little we have changed as a society since the middle ages. All of the suspects are down on their luck, lonely people that were an easy target. The parents generated indescribably damage. My client denies the allegations completely. He was friendly with children—this type of person does not make mature and intelligent friends—but never touched any child. If we are talking about 50-100 children, whom, according to the claim, were raped almost constantly, and had horrifying things done to them over the course of years—how can it be that no one heard cries or saw any sign? They have not presented any medical records. Fifty children were questioned, and only four were found suitable to approach the judge. A pedophile chain, it is said, but in fact, except for two—they did not know each other. The police is acting in the interest of calming parents, the public pressure does the rest. My client’s innocence will be proved in court.”[Translators: According to a Nachlaot resident the medical records do show that children were raped.]

Attorney Eitan Arnon, who represents the suspect BP: “My client denies the accusations attributed to him. The picture that arises from this is that the weak people in the neighborhood were fingered and had terrible accusations made against them. In court we will show the chain of events that led to these false accusations against my client.

Attorney Gali Gilad, who represents the suspect Z.: “The indictment is an “unripe fruit” of circumstances in which suspicions of sexual abuse of minors were uncovered in Nachalaot. In the hysterical atmosphere, partly justified, the testimony was tainted, after the parents took the law into their own hands and tried to coordinate testimonies, pressured parents to bring their children in for testifying, and mentioned names of individuals in the meeting. The name of my client was involved as a result of a mixing up a number of reasons for wanting to blacken his name. The indictment is the product of slander, and my words are backed up by objective evidence.

Read more:

Nachlaot Pedophile Crisis: At Least 100 Victims

Links on the Nachlaot crisis (JewishMom.com)

Will ‘Sex Abuse Ring’ Yield Vigilante Justice? (Forward’s Allison Kaplan Summer)

What you can do: Terrorists Destroy Nachlaot (Ima2Seven)

Readers from overseas come here to find out whether a Hebrew or Israeli name they have chosen “fits” here in Israel. I think that the parents who chose the following names would have been discouraged by readers.

Some of the “weird” names suggestedby readers (via Facebook) are actually common, like Nehorai, Keshet or Maytav (my daughter has 3 in her third-grade class). That’s because my readers are English speakers and tend not to connect with the trendy Israeli names.

My all-time favorite unusual girl’s name is Kefira. The parents saw the feminine form of lion on a list of baby names. Unfortunately, Kefira has a much more comon meaning–heresy.

My favorite boys’ name is Hidai (pronounced hee-dai), which even Israelis find unusual. The  parents didn’t invent it–II Samuel 23:30 mentions Hidai as one of King David’s warriors. It fits right in with the more popular -ai endings like Itai and Nehorai. We also knew an Ilai, another of David’s warriors mentioned in I Chronicles, 11:29.

Soon, Israeli names may have to pass through a government committee for approval:

The so-called Public Names Committee would include an educator, a psychologist and a social worker. The panel would advise the interior minister in the event that a Population Registry clerk is concerned about the name parents have selected for their newborn; in that case, the parents could also consult the committee.

I’m not sure I’m in favor of this. Israelis are so diverse–what kind of committee could make fair decisions? So many trendy names today would  never have gotten through this panel.

Here are a few more unusual names. Let us know what you think! (Just don’t be mean, as parents are reading.)

Unusual Boys’ Names

Snir (name of a river in the Hula valley)

Yaal (moving upward? Not to be confused with the girls’ name Yael.)

Amizakai (My nation is pure?)

Unusual Girls’ Names

Achzava (disappointment). Reader Leah says that this girl, one of a long line of sisters, actually lives in Beit Shemesh.

Har and Aretz (mountain and land). The reader wasn’t sure if they are boys or girls.

Shuvi Shabbat Shalom Joya

Vayehi Or Bracha (let there be light . . . of blessing)

Bat-Yiftah, daughter of Yiftah. (Yiftah made a pledge to sacrifice the first thing he saw in battle, and it was his daughter.

Seorit (sounds like Seorah, barley).

Diglit

Meirit, Aviella, Yochana – all uncommon feminizations of boys’ names.

Heichal (palace)

I’m sure I haven’t hit the tip of the iceberg here. What can you add to the list?

More baby name posts:

Top 20 Israeli Baby Names for Girls

Top 20 Israeli Baby Names for Boys

Best Bloopers by New Olim

Israeli Baby Names Page

Update: The Yisrael Hayom report has additional information on the Nachalaot case.

Dear readers,

I was planning to write a light post today, about unusual Israeli baby names, but unfortunately that post will wait. If you are looking for inspiring, humorous posts I ask for your patience–they will come.

Instead I have translated an article that is difficult to read.

First, I want to let you know that Rachel of Ima2Seven published a long post about the horrifying pedophile case that rocked the neighborhood of Nachlaot in Jerusalem. Residents Jewish Mom and Mekubal have been reporting on this nightmare.

Rachel’s post includes a collection of links and calls  to action, including ways to donate to help the families. Please visit and read the whole thing: Terrorists Destroy Nachlaot.

The following article by Yossi Haziz appeared yesterday in Hebrew in JerusalemNet, a division of Ynet. It summarizes the discussion of the case in a special session of a Knesset committee. 

The dimensions of the pedophilia ring, in the heart of one of the haredi communities in central Jerusalem, were exposed today in a Knesset committee  in all of its terrible breadth. More than 100 small children underwent severe physical and sexual abuse by about 30 adult suspects, and all in a small and closed neighborhood. About half of the suspects were arrested, but most continue to live and operate in the neighborhood without interference.

In a choked voice and with tears in their eyes, the mothers described their children who were sexually abused and the shock that their small children experienced (and some continue to experience) over more than a year. Almost none of the participants in this special session of the committee on the rights of children remained impassive, including representatives of the police “who have seen and hear everything,” upon hearing the chilling testimonies of what has been described as “the largest pedophile case since the founding of the state.”

The dimensions of the case are not fully realized. More than 100 children were sexually and physically abused by nearly 30 suspects, and all this happened in a “nature reserve” of no more than 500 square meters, in the center of a small haredi neighborhood in the heart of Jerusalem. The terror that continues even today, even after the authorities have entered the picture. Even after some of the suspects have been arrested (one committed suicide, one fled the country), the traumatized parents feel helpless that they can’t protect their children, even within their buildings.

And the testimonies, too difficult to bear: A, a mother of four children—all of whom were attacked, some more than once—tells that until her children learned not to approach the door of a particular resident, another one from a different apartment attacked them. G, mother of seven, tells with tears in her eyes how she twice “missed”‘ the arrival of the school bus—the two times that her children became victims of the suspects, a few meters from her home.

The children have experienced every possible type of abuse and terror, like 7-year-old girl who saw the rape of her younger neighbor. In some cases the suspects even tied the hands and legs of the victims and placed a knife near their necks. In order to ensure that no one would tell, the suspects scared the children with a big dog that will “eat anyone who tells,” or through lighting a bonfire in the yards of the buildings, where they would ”throw anyone who tells.”

All of the children are cared for by the welfare authorities. But the authorities don’t have the means to correct the damage. Most of the children don’t go out of the house except to school. Some even refuse to go to the synagogue for fear of meeting the suspects, who walk around freely without interference.

They[the parents] turned to the police—and were disappointed.

The suspects are adults, who are  not considered normative, also within the norms of haredi society. Most live alone, in apartments they received through inheritance, in the neighborhood where they have lived all their lives. This is a closed neighborhood, that is not used to “hanging out” their dirty laundry, but in light of such shocking events all of the social codes have been breached. With great courage, and the backing of the rabbis, the parents turned to the authorities and issued complaints, and despite the difficulty—cooperated fully.

But here they were greatly disappointed, as described by D., a mother whose 5-year-old was repeatedly abused: “The investigators presented the girl with blurred pictures of the suspects, and afterward the children’s investigator claimed that her testimony was “problematic” and “not reliable.” Not long ago, in the neighborhood, she let out a terrible scream and pointed to the man who hurt her, who stood meters from us, and even called his name. So what else do the police want?!! Why are these criminals still wandering around the yard??”

The Knesset session was headed by head of the committee Zevulun Orlev and took place in the presence of MKs (Knesset members) Uri Maklev and Orli Levi-Avekasis, along with representatives of the law, welfare, and justice departments. The testimonies were delivered only after removing video cameras and voice-recording devices from members of the press.

Ravit Zamir, a social worker from the Jerusalem municipality, reports, “We are talking about one of the worse cases I have seen in more than 20 years of work. This case has been known for a year, but only last summer did we begin to understand its terrible dimensions. There are families with 6 and 7 children who have been injured. Again and again we accompany, and provide treatment  for, every child and family who has been injured. We have conducted over 100 interrogations by investigators, with dozens more ahead. We are talking about world-class terror.”

The police representative in the discussion, commander of investigations chief superintendent Shmulik ben Amos notes that ” a special investigative team was formed that deals only with this issue. The police are not trying to conserve in their efforts. But one must understand that this is a complicated and complex investigation. We have brought a community officer into the neighborhood, in order to increase the feeling of security. We are talking about a  number of perpetrators who live in the neighborhood and it’s known that in some cases they worked as a team. A number have been arrested. Others have been arrested and released but the investigation into them continues. A few findings have been gathered from raids by the police into their homes and another round of arrests is expected soon,” said Ben Amos and added: “Both as an officer and as a father, I am shocked and I identify with the pain of the parents. One must understand that there is difficulty in getting to a particular level of testimony against the suspects in order to make it possible to issue an indictment. The difficulty comes from investigating children and determining the “level of reliability” of their testimony. We are and continue to make efforts, with intention to widen the circle of arrests.”

“The worst case of pedophilia in the history of Israel”

These facts do not comfort the parents. Even after the end of the discussion, the mothers approached the MKs with pleas to do everything in their power to ensure the peace of their children in the neighborhood.

“The authorities are not convinced of the breadth of this occurrence,” said attorney Eitan Lehman, who represents the parents.” There is a misconception that pedophiles work alone, and the police are continuing to say this despite the fact that the indictment received by prosecutors had 6-7 people in the same room in the neighborhood, who abused a child. This was an exceptional situation, the most serious of any in all of the history of pedophilia in Israel. They needed to recruit the best experts, including computer experts.” By this Lehman refers to the fact that many of the acts were filmed by the suspects, and shown to the children during further abusive acts.

Head of the committee, Zevulun Orlev, said that ” one can’t make peace with the fact that justice has not been served to the criminals and that the children of the neighborhood are still exposed to the continuation of abuse.”

A.L., a neighborhood resident whose child was a victim of abuse, said as he left the hall in pain: “Because we are talking about a haredi neighborhood in Jerusalem, the media has not come to investigate and to protect us. We saw how the media acted in the case of the “Corrido brothers” (a pair of pedophiles living in Haifa). We have no way to protect our children even within our buildings. Most of the families are living hand-to-mouth, yet we still came out to struggle. But we have the feeling that nothing will help us.”

I asked Amanda Elkohen, a Nachlaot resident, to share her comments. She says:

There aren’t enough Charaedi Therapists in the whole country to deal with all the victims here in a timely manner. Most of the kids’ first language is Yiddish, not Hebrew. Also, we as a neighborhood will be setting up a shadowing program to follow the largest threat (Skippy) 24/7 if we get enough volunteers. Anyone interested in participating can contact me (rabbiswife at gmail.com). The idea is not to drive him into another community to make new problems, but to deal with it internally.

What can you do? See Terrorists Destroy Nachlaot.

Guest post: Were the Nachalaot Parents Negligent?

This article has many more details: Yisrael Hayom report Nachalaot pedophile case.