I suppose it was inevitable.
For years, I'd read about scandals in various religious communities with a sense of growing dread. The words jumped out as sensationalized headlines: Cover-ups, Christians, schools, Muslims, churches, Evangelists, lawsuits Mormons, statute of limitations, victims, settlements. The details of individual cases provided unimaginable horrors and secrets, broken trusts and shattered childhoods.
Still, that happened to other people, in other religions.
Recently, there was a well-publicized case among the Satmar sect of Hasidic Jews, in which a brave young girl confronted her molester in front of her entire community. She was threatened, ostracized -- even bullied in court -- but she remained resolute and ultimately got some measure of justice with a quick conviction.
Yet it still felt strangely removed; the devout Hasidim, with their ultra-strict codes and secretive practices, were probably as much an enigma to me as to non-Jews. They were the odd cousin that shows up at family events -- we're related but nobody is quite sure how.
I grew up in a traditionally orthodox Jewish household -- 18 years of yeshiva education, keeping kosher, synagogues, circumcisions, bar mitzvahs, weddings, shivas. I've always felt a powerful connection both culturally and spiritually to my religion and wear the mantle of Judaism and my unique upbringing proudly. In the industry where I make my living -- entertainment -- the old axiom that Jews run the media couldn't feel further from reality. Most people I've dealt with drop the term nachas with ease but -- witnessing their behavior -- have no idea what the core tenets of Judaism actually mean.
Finally, the day I'd always feared arrived. An email from a childhood friend with a link to a story in a Jewish paper: investigations into murky events from many years ago involving rabbis and young boys at an Orthodox school, long-ago complaints and hushed-up dismissals. As I read the account more closely, I realized that it wasn't just my religion or my people. These were my peers. This was my neighborhood.
This was my Rabbi.
I spent my childhood with this man -- listening to him speak every Saturday at our local temple, eating Sabbath meals at his house, playing with his sons. He spent countless hours preparing me for my Bar Mitzvah, my singing and learning "skills" required Job-like patience on his part. All in all, the amount of time I spent in this man's presence is literally incalculable. I never heard, saw or experienced a single moment of anything improper in all those years, and I'd never heard anyone claim otherwise in the years since.
But here it was in print, for everyone to see, with his name and accompanying photo. In this viral age, the story spread throughout the world's Jewish community with lightning speed, the whispers of gossip not far behind -- "Did you hear?" "Did you suspect?" "Did you know?" Everyone has an opinion, with most all too willing to share.
Despite my cloistered upbringing, I live in the real world and know the facts. Bad things happen in every walk of life; regardless of religion, race, sexuality, ethnicity, gender, there's no discrimination when it comes to wrongdoing. The sole tie that binds us all is our humanity, and it can be our salvation or our undoing.
But I suppose I see trauma through my own prism. I'm embarrassed when I hear that a crime has happened and the name sounds Jewish. History may not distinguish between a Mark David Chapman and a David Berkowitz, but I know which one was Jewish and which one wasn't. And always, through the most public and shameful of evildoers -- Bernie Madoff stole from The Elie Wiesel Foundation! -- the same thought, almost logical for a religion whose already tiny population was shredded by the Holocaust: This won't help, we all think, there are enough people out there who already hate us.
Along with everyone else, we cry for humanity whenever a child is harmed, no matter the circumstances. The most important part of any story like this are obviously the children themselves. Yet now this most horrid of scandal involving innocent kids, an all too frequent one nowadays, has arrived at the doorstep. I try to remain objective, without judgment, and pray for awareness, change, resolution, healing, protection, prevention. The truth.
Can I also pray that my faith won't be shattered?