Important Comments By Various Bloggers

The following are comments posted on Phil Jacobs Blog. I thought the messages were important and wanted to make sure everyone had a chance to read them.

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Posted by Blaine Mischel on 09/20/07 at 02:14 PM

“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” -- Winston Churchill

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Posted by Phil Jacobs on 02/19/07 at 03:11 PM
Way Too Much Fear
By Phil Jacobs

For the past several years, I’ve watched the websites and the blogs when it comes to sexual molestation within the Jewish community.

I’ve noticed and learned so much.

There are so many who wish to offer counsel from their “expert” perches inside the organizational cage of societal structure.

We don’t hear enough, however from the real experts in the field of sexual abuse…the victims, the survivors.

We don’t hear enough, because so many are so afraid to be stigmatized. So many are so afraid of the results of their courage.

And this is a huge, huge mistake.

Sexual molestation, abuse whatever we call it is like the smoke from a fire. Even though the flames are long ago doused, the stench of the smoke still lingers on in the place of the fire. That’s what abuse does. It haunts its victims. It is there when they make their decisions about friendships, about jobs, about education, about child rearing, about religion.

And there are so many here in the Baltimore Jewish community who have been victimized by this. Some have memories that are decades old, yet like ice figures they are often frozen in place from seeking help or exposing their perpetrators.
We cannot pretend that this toxic problem doesn’t exist among us. We must do what we can to help welcome those victims who quietly suffer to come out of their places of hiding and seek to begin living full lives.

Please don’t make them feel awkward. Give them a place of welcome.

And if they aren’t too enthusiastic about their faith right now, that’s okay. Welcome them anyway. Bring people around through kindness and friendship and trust. Victims and Survivors so need to be able to trust again.

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Posted by Sickened By Our Community on 09/20/07 at 04:23 PM
I’m very much aware of the hatred that there is in our community for anyone who rocks the boat. This is especially true when it comes to those who harass those who are speaking out against sexual abuse.

What we are forgetting is that what that the harassment is to the victim advocates is nothing compared to what those who have been sexually abused had to face.

Can you imagine if you or one of your children was just sexually abused and you tried to tell someone in Baltimore?

Can you imagine what it must be like to go to your revered rabbi, and then for him to tell you to keep quiet?

Can you imagine what it is like to go to Jewish Family Services and find out that the therapists there really have no training in working with survivors. They have no experience working with the justice system. The worst part of this is that the rabbi who told you to keep quiet have a good working relationship with this agency. Is there really such a thing as confidentiality at JFS?

It scares me that Aviva Weisbord and also a few of the Tendlers can have access to confidential records.