I received an email from a kind person involved in a Agudath Israel program. One of the things this program sets out to do is to make sure that children of single parents have someone to take them to shul on Simhat Torah. He wanted me to publicize the program. I wanted to publicize it but how could I? Agudah leadership stonewalls the rabbinic abuse issue. Rabbi Yehudah Kolko is alleged to have abused at Camp Agudah itself. And Agudah's spokesperson – perhaps the most dishonest person I have ever dealt with – consistently downplays the abuse issue and slyly attacks victims and advocates. How can I ask people to turn their children over to an organization that employs such a man and whose leadership itself is so insensitive to the plight of these children?
And so I sent the man an email apologizing for not being able to promote his program. And I told him why. And when I was done it hit me like a ton of bricks. I cannot turn fatherless children over to rabbis! Can you imagine? And I cried.
Someone please print this and show it to the Novominsker and to anyone else on the Moetzet you can reach. This is what it has come down to. This is what their silence brings. Rabbis, when your time comes, I guarantee you, G-d won't congratulate you on your learning or your piety or on how well you run a tish. He's going to sit at the head of the beis din shel mylah and He's going to ask you one question: "When little Mendel and Sheindel and Dovi and Ruchi were molested, where were you? Do I care about your blatt gemara and your chidushim? No! I care about the lives of those little children!"
Right now, rabbis, you have no good answer to that question. Don't you think you should have?