Israelis feel betrayed by celebrity rabbi’s corruption
Rabbi Yoshiyahu Pinto's plea bargain has exposed the extent of abuse by Israel's popular rabbis, some of whom have made hundreds of millions of shekels in donations from their followers.
Sassi Gez, a star defense attorney who is a welcome guest in the courts of rabbis and Kabbalists, recounted to Al-Monitor Sept. 21 that he had seen with his own eyes how they achieve prominence and accrue unusual power.
Over the years, influential rabbis have emerged in the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox sphere and also within the Sephardic world, attracting both religious and secular followers. Some of them created courts and became known all over the country for their Jewish wisdom and unique blessings. But now a new phenomenon has sprung up. Self-proclaimed rabbis have gathered around them flocks of followers who admire them blindly, attribute to them supernatural qualities and even hand them money and gifts.
But the past year has been tough for these rabbis. Their standing has been eroded and the adulation has been immeasurably weakened. All of a sudden, their faults are being exposed, and as if that were not enough, some of them may have gotten mixed up with the law to the extent that they face imprisonment.
One of these rabbis, Yoshiyahu Pinto, is about to serve a year in jail after turning state’s evidence and signing a plea bargain Sept. 17. Others, such as the chief rabbi of the city of Holon, Avraham Yosef, and Rabbi Eliezer Berland, have been detained and interrogated, and some have simply disappeared from the public eye. They seem to have gone underground, and haven’t been seen or heard from since. Barring the unexpected, Pinto will begin serving his one-year term after the district court approves the deal he cut with the state prosecutor.
