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Dirty Poems & Sex Abuse: Two Jewish Educators in Big Trouble

Two Jewish educators are out of jobs—and one is on the run—due to allegations of molestation and…dirty poems.

The first infraction seems fairly minor: David Prashker, director of the Toronto Leo Baeck Jewish Day School, was all but forced to quit his job in the wake of a scandal involving poetry he wrote decades ago and published on his personal website. Though the poetry has since been removed, the National Post summarizes it:

One poem explored a young man's heady sexual encounter and used the word "f—" several times, another included the verse "the first act of killing is the hardest" and "the second time is remarkably straightforward." It is not clear when the poetry was written–Mr. Prashker's Web site references material that dates back to 1973 — and it has since been removed from his personal page.

Was Prashker foolish to publish such poetry on his personal website? Arguably, yes. If the poems in question were written years before he entered the school system though, it seems a tad unfair to penalize him. Writing some angsty poetry and dropping the f-bomb in 1973 isn't exactly the kind of thing that should get a man fired in 2008. If anything, it's the poor judgment demonstrated by putting his crude verse on the internet makes him seem like an idiot—not to mention a bad leader for a Jewish (or any) school. On the opposite end of the spectrum we find Malka Leifer, former principal of an ultra-Orthodox school in inner Melbourne. The wife of a rabbi and mother of eight is being accused of all kinds of craziness, including the allegations that she "shared a bed" with her students, and that she molested girls at school and at camps. Parents also claim that one victim has attempted suicide. Within 24 hours of being fired from the school, Leifer left Australia for Israel, and some parents seem to think the school paid for her flight.

There are also claims that Mrs. Leifer left Australia with up to $100,000 borrowed from a family within the community, two days before she flew to Israel. She is also alleged to have taken about $20,000 from a pool of money earned from some students' part-time jobs. The money, managed by Mrs. Leifer, was pooled in a community fund and then lent to people in need.

This is hardly the first case of teachers and principals being accused of molestation in Jewish schools. The Awareness Center has a frighteningly long list of similar cases from all around the world. What’s striking about the gulf between these two stories is that in the case of Prashker it seems clear that a parent was out to get him, and would go to any lengths—including hacking into the school’s computer system—in order to defame the director’s name. In Leifer’s case, the molestation seems to have gone on for many years before girls spoke up, likely because of the stigma associated with sexual abuse in these communities.

The challenge facing the day school community is in creating an environment that's open enough that kids in day schools will come forward if something inappropriate is happening, but principals don’t have to be responsible for bad words (and bad poetry) they wrote decades ago.

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