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Special Report: Sexual Molestation
April 13, 2007
Comments (0)Baltimore Confronts Sexual Abuse In Rabbinate
Phil JacobsExecutive Editor
Photographer Murray Levin has looked through his camera lenses countless times, capturing Jewish weddings, bar mitzvahs and other joyous events. The one “picture,” however, he can’t stop focusing on isn’t in his camera but in his 64-year-old memory.
It’s an image of a bar mitzvah lesson at the old Agudas Achim Synagogue. It’s the shame that came along with his teacher, the now-deceased Rabbi Ephraim F. Shapiro, placing his hand down the 12-year-old Murray Levin’s pants and fondling him.
With at least half a dozen maftir lessons came the rabbi’s touch.
But it wasn’t just Murray Levin.
The former Talmudical Academy principal, by one influential Baltimore rabbi’s estimate, molested hundreds of times.
Bob Glickstein, 65, another survivor of Rabbi Shapiro’s fondlings, figures it could be thousands. One thing that hasn’t survived for Mr. Glickstein is any connection to Judaism. Living now in Vero Beach, Fla., this yoga instructor calls his bar mitzvah day “the worst day of my life, because I had to have Rabbi Shapiro there.”
Mr. Glickstein married out of the faith, had a child and raised him as a non-Jew. He not so jokingly calls himself an “anti-Semite.”
This was part of the cost of Rabbi Shapiro’s actions.
Rabbi Shapiro, who died in April 1989, remains “alive” in the memories of so many. His collateral damage is everywhere. A weekly Kiddush of respected businessmen meets, and the topic invariably turns to the sexual molestation the rabbi heaped on many of them.
Several local rabbis recently expressed profound compassion for the victims, encouraging them to seek qualified, professional help. Indeed, at two major Orthodox synagogues on the last day of Passover, rabbis spoke from the pulpit on the issue of child molestation. The Vaad Ha Rabbonim in a meeting last week issued a statement to the community condemning sexual molestation and supporting survivors to seek help.
The following are interviews with three of the rabbi’s “survivors.”
If you are a survivor or if you know of someone who survived any sexual molestation, you have an audience here.
Murray Levin
The way Murray Levin sees it, sexual predators live in a world of “no risk and total reward.”
Organized Judaism — be it congregations, schools or community groups — buries this news or distracts, he said.
“I don’t think they see themselves getting apprehended,” Mr. Levin said of predators. “They are bright people, great communicators and intellectual. And they will continue until we bring out the trauma they cause. We have to create an environment that shows them they can’t continue without severe consequences.”
Mr. Levin held his molestation in for decades. He does not want anyone else to hold back. Most of all, he sees it as a calling that older survivors must do what they can to protect all future generations, even if it means “teaching little children to speak out.”
“Families,” he said, “are going to have to speak up. We have to become the predator of the predators.”
Mr. Levin was molested by Rabbi Shapiro and by one other person connected to the Agudas Achim Synagogue in the 3600 block of Reisterstown Road near Cold Spring Lane. He was studying for his bar mitzvah, which would take place at Shaarei Zion Synagogue.
“Rabbi Shapiro was grooming me with French kissing and masturbation,” said Mr. Levin.
Mr. Levin kept it all quiet. He didn’t know that there was a possibility of someone else involved until four years after his bar mitzvah. He was watching a football game on TV with a couple of friends. The friends pretended to tackle one another like football players, and one of them randomly said, “Rabbi Shapiro stuck his fingers in my ass.”
That was Mr. Levin’s first clue that he wasn’t alone.
In between his molestation, Mr. Levin — who would lead junior services in shul and who described himself as a gifted and talented child, captain of the safety patrol, and concert master of his high school orchestra — began to fall internally. His image of self, his trust in boundaries and other people failed.
To this day, even though he makes a great deal of his living photographing the Jewish community, Mr. Levin wonders what might have been with his life had it not been violated.
“Many of us are still hiding,” he said with a quiet voice.
“To me, anybody could be a pedophile,” he said. “Everybody who works with or who is near our children need to be scrutinized. I want everyone to be aware of who you pass responsibility of your children to. I would like to see these predators at least be given an opportunity for rehabilitation, to be useful. But they have to be compelled to seek help. Also, people need to know who the pedophiles are, if they are alive or if they are dead. “
Bob Glickstein
He doesn’t want much to do with Judaism.
He can still “feel” the texture of Rabbi Shapiro’s mustache against his face when he was being kissed.
Bob Glickstein’s Jewish “upbringing” ended during his bar mitzvah lessons with Rabbi Shapiro at Agudas Achim.
“He used religion to molest young boys,” said Mr. Glickstein.
Mr. Glickstein talks candidly in a Vero Beach coffee bar called Cacophony. He has only told a couple of people about his molestation.
But he wants the word out there now.
“Rabbi Shapiro knew what he was doing,” said Mr. Glickstein. “He had a boys group he called the Akiba Boys of Agudas Achim. They would do chores around the shul. But meanwhile, he was molesting them. He had a system of bar mitzvah lessons that would feed into his molestation. Everything he did was about molesting boys.
“It was a horrific experience,” he added. “He would call me into his office. He’d start playing with you.”
It was difficult for Mr. Glickstein to continue. He sat up straight, perhaps finding confidence in a yoga posture, and he remembered some more.
He called his bar mitzvah the worst day of his life, because Rabbi Shapiro was in attendance. The rabbi was also at his father’s funeral.
Mr. Glickstein kept it to himself, yet he used it as part of his influence to start looking into other religions, such as Eastern religions. A short marriage to a non-Jew resulted in a son, whom he raised out of the faith.
There was nothing joking about this comment on his face. “I am basically anti-Semitic,” he said. “I like Jews, but I just need to stay away from them [as a result of his molestations].
“There’s always been a lot of fear and anger in my life that comes as a result of Rabbi Shapiro’s actions,” he said. “There’s never a time that passes that I don’t think about him. There’s anger and there’s fear.”
Mr. Glickstein said that he’s always had difficulty since the molestations, which happened four to six times, when it comes to authority figures and establishing close relationships.
David Framowitz
David Framowitz was an 11th-grade Talmudical Academy student from Brooklyn, N.Y., boarding in the school’s dormitory. He said he was molested by Rabbi Shapiro on three separate occasions.
When Rabbi Shapiro attempted a fourth try, the high school junior threatened to kill the rabbi.
Mr. Framowitz, 49, remembers that Rabbi Shapiro was the dormitory counselor. He would lie in the beds of students, reaching to fondle them. And it was common he’d try to kiss them on the lips.
Mr. Framowitz, who now lives in Israel, was a major source for a New York Magazine article last year based on his $20 million federal lawsuit against Rabbi Yehudah Kolko and Yeshiva Torah Temimah of Flatbush in Brooklyn. (Mr. Framowitz said Rabbi Kolko molested him when he was around 12.)
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"I became a student for seven months [at] TA in Baltimore," said Mr. Framowitz. "I had Rabbi Shapiro attack me three times. The last time I told him, ‘You touch me one more time, I'll kill you.'
"He was the dorm counselor. He'd walk around and French kiss boys, poke them with his fingers. He'd lie across you when you were in bed. He'd play with you."
Mr. Framowitz would tell his mother, who insisted he leave TA immediately. None of the other boys he knew wanted to discuss Rabbi Shapiro.
He then gave several reasons why people stay so silent. "There's a fear factor," he said. "There's a worry over
shidduchim [finding a match for marriage]. ‘What are the neighbors going to say? It can’t happen to a nice Jewish family. A rabbi doesn’t do these things, especially a frum rabbi. There’s something wrong with the boy. It’s not the Jewish way, it’s not the frum way. It can’t be.’”
Last September during a visit to Baltimore, Mr. Framowitz decided to pay an unscheduled visit to Talmudical Academy. It was his first time there since 1974.
He met with Rabbi Yehuda Lefkowitz, the school’s executive director. “I told Rabbi Lefkowitz that I was a victim of Shapiro’s,” said Mr. Framowitz. “I told him I thought there should be some sort of monetary scholarship fund to pay for the therapy of the victims.”
Rabbi Lefkowitz informed the school’s board, and grimly said “nobody took it as a joking matter.”
Mr. Framowitz said he thinks there are well over 1,000 people who were molested by Rabbi Shapiro.
“The guy was a real sicko,” said Mr. Framowitz. “He was worse than Kolko. I’ve made it through my life, but this is something you don’t forget ever. It’s always with you, always there. And if I’m not busy or not doing things, my mind wanders back to those days.”
Rabbi Shapiro Is Deceased. Why Print This?
“He can’t defend himself.”
“He’s deceased, what difference does it make now?”
“This is an embarrassment to his family.”
These are just three of the reasons why we were asked not to print the name of the deceased Rabbi Ephraim F. Shapiro. Pikesville area mental health professionals offer suggestions to several concerns.
• “He can’t defend himself.”
He died in 1989. He was eulogized before 700 people as a “man of deep religious devotion, Torah scholarship and gentle kindnesses, to his family, his students and to many in the community.”
There are estimates of hundreds of molestation victims who weren’t able to “defend” themselves while the rabbi was alive. There are young men whose lives were changed forever because of his acts. Some of these men are more figuratively “dead” than Rabbi Shapiro will ever be. They need our help, compassion and therapeutic assistance. It wasn’t their fault. They can perhaps heal now.
• “He’s deceased, what difference does it make now?
Survivors may find answers and empowerment if they know that their molester was actually a survivor of Rabbi Shapiro’s. Mental health professionals are legally obligated to report deceased perpetrators to Protective Services. The ensuing investigations focus on all of the perpetrator’s survivors, and the subsequent possibility that they have or are currently molesting children as well. Given the reality that survivors are vulnerable to molesting others, and the cycle continues to perpetuate itself, it is imperative that the names of all perpetrators –– dead and alive –– are disclosed.
• “This is an embarrassment to his family.”
The models of discussion and behind-the-scenes declarations against molestation are not working, suggest one therapist, especially in the Orthodox community. At best, a person is taken away from a setting of teaching children, or sometimes sent out of town. Arrests, the courage of a survivor to charge his molester, don’t happen a great deal of the time.
Names.
Perhaps if a pedophile knows that this is now about names and his association to names of innocent relatives. Perhaps, just perhaps, that will keep another child safe for a day.
Who Was Rabbi Shapiro?
Rabbi Ephraim F. Shapiro was the former principal of Talmudical Academy. His April 1989 funeral services were held at the Old Court Road yeshiva.He was 72 when he died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Rabbi Shapiro was the son of Russian immigrants. He was born on New York’s Lower East Side. A graduate of the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School and Yeshiva University, Rabbi Shapiro came to Baltimore in 1941 as spiritual leader of Congregation Agudas Achim.
He left in 1955 to become rabbi of a congregation in New Rochelle, N.Y. Two years later, he returned here to become the rabbi at the Tifereth Israel Anshe Sphard Congregation on Dolfield Avenue. He held that position until 1968.
In addition, he served as principal of TA, as well as working as a guidance counselor and a dorm counselor. When he retired in 1982, he was honored for 25 years of service to the yeshiva.