Nechemya Weberman News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

In a jammed media sphere littered with the crumbling shells of failed news sites, it’s hard to imagine a new one whose mission could really set it apart. Nevertheless, when Naftuli Moster, a former Hasid known for his tireless advocacy for improved secular education in the ultra-Orthodox community, asked me to help launch his new project, I jumped at the chance; I saw that contrary to King Solomon’s famous pronouncement, this was, after all, something new under the sun:

A Yiddish-language newspaper serving the Satmar Hasidic community also published a series of favorable articles about the former therapist, who is accused of sexually abusing an adolescent girl.

The visit, and the weekly series of articles in Kiryas Joel Vochenshrift, have riled advocates for sexual abuse victims in the Hasidic community.

Following the exposé about Hasidic yeshivas where children receive almost no secular education, we’ve seen a shifting of goalposts among spokespeople and leaders of the schools. They used to pretend that yeshivas offered a robust secular education, or that their religious education covered the same material as secular education and produced the same — or even better! — outcomes. Now they’re admitting it doesn’t but insisting this is the parents’ choice to prioritize religion and community values over dominant secular values.

The plea on behalf of Nachemya Weberman, who has only served nine years of a 50-year sentence, appears to be the only time District Attorney Eric Gonzalez intervened for someone convicted of a sex crime.