Not much mentioned here in the United States, there’s massive reaction to charges of sexual misconduct leveled against one of the premier voices of the West Bank Settlement movement, Rabbi Mordechai Elon. Known in Israel as “Rabbi Motti” and featured on a regular television show, Elon has denied all the charges of inappropriate touching and behavior.
“Columnist Nahum Barnea of Israel’s top-selling newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth said: ‘Every word in this story becomes an emotional atom bomb when it happens in a religious society — sex, homosexuality, charisma, minors, a rabbi’s power.
‘This is not a storm in a teacup. This is a typhoon. No wonder many in the national-religious public felt this week that their world had collapsed,’ Barnea wrote on Friday.
Elon’s father sat on Israel’s supreme court and one brother was a cabinet minister. The leftish Haaretz newspaper called the Elons ‘the Kennedys of the religious Zionist camp’.”
Read the full article here. It’s a reminder to all of us that it’s within communities of trust that we find trust most likely to be violated.