Response to Suri Davis, Editor www.thefivetowns.com

This was from the Friday Newsletter of thefivetowns.com - you can visit the site to see the full posting, below is a letter I wrote to the editor Suri Davis.

“RIVKI AND YOEL

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

Dear Friends:

I received both of these submissions this week.

I would like to say "coincidentally", but you know

I don't believe in coincidences.  Take the juxta-

positions as you find them.

Would love your thoughts.

-Suri”

Dear Suri,

As my editor and host of my column I must correct some misconceptions from the above introduction that you gave to mine and Rivki’s columns. First of all, I did not submit that piece. That is a posting you lifted without permission from my blog www.therantingheeb.blogspot.com which went up several weeks ago. I did submit a different column on the same subject that you did not publish. That submission was a response to an article in the Jewish Week that quoted me about the story.

Secondly, the way you present it, places me as the counter argument for the positive post high school Israel experience that Rivki so eloquently described. That is wrong and misleading. After the incident described in my posting I remained in Israel for 2 years and the rest of my experiences there were some of the best of my life. I made lifelong friends and studied under wonderful rabbis and scholars. One of my children went to Israel to study after high school. We are a family of ardent Zionists and have been on multiple visits to the Holy Land. My wife and I are proud that we have siblings that live there and our connection to Israel is ingrained in our blood.

Context is key, claiming that Rivki’s eloquence together with my calling out an abusive rabbi a juxtaposition is disingenuous, misleading and personally hurtful to me. While this may be a way to “sell” stories it is wrong. I want our readers to know and understand that I was speaking out about specific accusations of abuse by one rabbi who runs an Israel program. In no way am I discouraging anyone from sending their child to Israel after high school for a year of study, I encourage it and believe it is life changing and forever binds that child with the historic homeland of the Jewish Nation. Any other implication is wrong and needs to be remedied on the pages of your site.

Respectfully,

Yoel Moskowitz 

PS - I asked Suri to publish this letter but she would only do so with modifications that would have changed the tone of my response, I declined. She has also since posted a commentary about my Rav Bina post in which she concludes with the following pearls of wisdom:

"Parents know what they are doing when they send their children to Rav Bina.  They are asking Rav Bina to make their kids more of a mentsch.  It is boot camp, and it is his yeshiva, and he doesn’t have to apologize for it.  The kids that feel that the heat is too hot will leave and go elsewhere."

Suri, you showed a certain bravery by publishing my story even if it was taken from my blog and not the story I submitted. But you've shown cowardice with the above equivication. While the emails you got about what I wrote might have been negative, my inbox is full of encouragement for the bravery I showed by coming forward. Yeshiva education is not a boot camp and public humiliation and abuse is wrong even if the one doing it carries the title rabbi. With now multiple accusations against Rabbi Bina including physical abuse, it is time to pull your head out of the sand and show some guts.