Rabbi Michael, I have to say I’m a bit shocked by you..
I took you to be a person who thinks and investigates deeply.
It’s sad to me that you’re posting something by a person (whom, incidentally, I know very well) who never really looked into the story deeply, but is fed by the news and by the ridiculous fact that the complainant mentioned during her remarks stations in Rabbi Tao’s life (for those who know, she used to come and go in the home of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda).
And that’s it… case closed. He’s not a judge and not a rabbinical judge, but he closed the case anyway… just sad..
I also don’t want to express an absolute opinion for the other side, only it seems strange to me as though no one in this country has ever heard of a targeted takedown using cynical and terrible tools. (See, for example, Gal Hirsch, and sadly the list is long..)

Hello Haggai.
I didn’t understand the source of this shock. I posted something by a person who presents a very firm position (too firm, in my opinion as well). But his arguments are not baseless. He himself writes that he did not investigate the story but is presenting the picture that emerges from the reports, so there is no false presentation here. So what exactly is the problem with that? I haven’t managed to understand.
As for targeted takedowns, I have to say that in my opinion it’s very unlikely in this case. When the whole family stands with the complainant, it’s unlikely that this is a conspiracy. Regarding Gal Hirsch, as I recall there was no false testimony there aimed at sabotage. It was a legal move. So it is not comparable to this case. In that sense, I don’t think the list is nearly as long as you write. In fact, it seems to me very short.

Thank you for your quick response, Rabbi.
I’ll try to explain more.
By posting Avi’s post, you are seemingly agreeing with his positions so long as you didn’t write otherwise; that’s why I expressed myself that way, and now I’ll explain more on the substance of the issue.
A person has to be naive to think that in this age, media determination of someone’s fate is not determination of fate, and therefore everyone has license to write his opinion without clarifying the matter.

A. Why did the complainants wait so many years, to the point of the statute of limitations, and only then go to the media?

B. Why did they go to the media and not to the professional bodies that deal with this? “I approached them,” she says, “but they shut me up” (Forum Takana: the woman never approached us!!)

C. “The arguments are not baseless” — from that moment on, are Avi Shweka and you permitted to spill his blood in the town square..?

I’d be glad to know whether, if the father of any of the readers of these lines were suspected of such offenses or others in such a vague way as in the present case, he would react this way. And not only because of the emotional side, which is invalid here, but because you understand there is another side. And there is no logic in deciding someone’s fate on the basis of a media article.
What I meant in my remark about Gal Hirsch was that this is not the first time we’ve seen how entire systems mobilize in the name of justice for the sake of a targeted takedown of a person they “don’t like the look of” for one reason or another.
(By the way, regarding the family, that’s not accurate; some support and some do not.)

I have a new insight for Avi and for some of the rabbis who published biased posts in favor of the complainants..
Rabbi Tao is also your brother, after all.
How was his fate decided without any real clarification of the matter?
I truly don’t understand.

“I’m not a judge, not a rabbinical judge, and I’m not deciding anyone’s fate…” — that’s what Avi writes, and on the other hand, even if the police and the rest of the justice system come, he holds that it’s not their business. So Avi, you most certainly did decide his fate. And you will never turn the wheel back.
So here we have a new method for a targeted takedown.
A complaint of sexual assault on which the statute of limitations has run out. And for you, Rabbi Michael — recruit support from part of the family, and make sure only that the arguments are not baseless.

Waiting for your reply.
Haggai.

If so, then apparently I wasn’t understood. When I post something by someone (without saying that I agree), that does not mean I agree with what he says, but only that there is public interest in reading these things. And indeed, in my opinion there is interest. The difficulties you raised are good difficulties (some less so), just as there are also other considerations in favor of the conclusion that these things really happened, which I did not bring here (such as puzzling conduct of his in the past that may be connected to the matter). But there is no point addressing all that here, since the investigation is supposed to examine it. The important claim for such a discussion is only that one cannot dismiss this out of hand, and it is not right to evade investigating the matter. That is the whole point in my opinion.
As for an investigation that will not take place: if indeed the conclusion had been not to investigate, then in my opinion there definitely would have been reason to form a position in light of the available data despite the limitations, since there is public importance to it and the police would not help us. But since there is an investigation, it should be left to them.
Regarding the question of what I would say about my own father, that is irrelevant. In that case I would be biased to the other side.

In the case of the first complainant, there is a “silenced voice” — the voice of her former husband, Yosef Te’ena, whose version can be found with a simple Google search, and it refutes his ex-wife’s version, yet is completely silenced in the media. Among other things, Yosef Te’ena describes that his ex-wife accused her own mother of murdering her two children!

The complaint of the second woman cannot be checked, because the witnesses who would support her claim — Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda and Rebbetzin Tao — passed away many years ago. And Karl Popper already taught us that what cannot be refuted cannot be proven. The Sages called this: “testimony that you cannot disprove through cross-examination.”

Best regards, Gadiel Shefatyahu Abu-Shahadeh

As for the first complaint — it is not clear that the statute of limitations applies, because she claims that Rabbi Tao assaulted her even after her marriage, and for rape the limitation period is 15 years. Therefore, even though the Hebron police recommended closing the case, both because of the statute of limitations and because of “the difficulty of establishing the complainant’s credibility” — there are still parties interested in continuing the investigation and talking about transferring it to Lahav 433…

I accept the comment that I should have noted next to Shweka’s post that it was too decisive. True, that seemed fairly obvious to me, but it would have been proper to say so. So here — you did it for me. 🙂

By the way, her family also supported her claims against her mother, that she murdered her two brothers. It’s a family narrative of theirs, and she simply took it to the police. In short, that proves nothing. Her family also accused the husband (according to his account) of having a relationship with the complainant’s mother. In short, this doesn’t sound like particularly reliable testimony.

To Emanuel — greetings,

As best I remember, the complainant accused her mother (according to her former husband) of having a relationship with Rabbi Tao…

Best regards, G.S.A.S., the digger

Thank you for your honest words, Rabbi.
So investigating the matter and not evading it is one thing (and incidentally, from an inquiry I made with one of his students,
Rabbi Tao himself is very interested in a police investigation),
but hanging someone in the public square is another..
and it seems that we as a society are corrupting ourselves by treating a woman’s word as the final word, and anyone who questions it is as if questioning etc… and there is neither law nor judge.
Without making a comparison! But in a similar place there was Yinon Magal in 2015, who apparently spoke in a friendly but crude way to one woman or another, and not that I justify his behavior from a religious-moral standpoint,
(all this without checking the facts) but from the legal standpoint the prosecution at the time announced that the case was closed for lack of guilt, and regarding another complaint the circumstances did not justify an indictment.
And what remained?
A quote from some of his words —
“ I call on anyone who accused me in the media and online: go file a complaint with the police… Suddenly a man wakes up in the morning and he is a serial sex offender, a criminal. Maybe you continued your routine lives, but my life stopped. I was humiliated in front of everyone and in front of my family. I cut short a promising career and lost my job.”

And the women who published? What did they gain? Maybe revenge..

And we as a society lost, and continue to lose, when there is no standard of truth other than someone’s moving post.

It is certainly true that a woman’s complaint is not something that needs no examination, and of course that unfounded assumption of feminists and their helpers is very problematic. On that, I think, even Shweka does not disagree.

After it became clear that Nehama Te’ena is delusional and accuses Rabbi Tao of being a successor to Mengele, is there still anything to pay attention to in what she says?

You and I are not supposed to deal with her claims regardless of that. The police are supposed to examine the allegations, because even if a woman is mentally ill, that does not mean she was not sexually abused. On the contrary, sometimes it is easier to abuse someone who is mentally ill.

In response to “Hear the Silenced Voice Too”

It is not correct to say: “and it refutes his ex-wife’s version,” because there is no indication at all that the ex-husband’s conflicting version is more correct. Family conflicts invite mutual accusations.

What is correct, in my humble opinion, is that when there are conflicting versions, greater caution is needed before accepting one of them.

Best regards, S.Z. Levinger (= G.S.A.S.)