Case
of Informant Reverberates Through L.A.’s Orthodox Community
The pressure was particularly great at the 900-family Modern Orthodox
Beth Jacob Congregation, in Beverly Hills, where the government’s chief
informant in the case, Robert Kasirer, is a member. Rabbi Steven Weil delivered
a sermon January 11, causing what must have been an awkward juxtaposition for
many congregants: The prayer books they were using were donated by the Kasirers
and emblazoned with their name.
Indeed, the question of Kasirer — the FBI witness who turned state’s
evidence against the Hasidic rebbe in exchange for a lighter sentence on
previous fraud charges stemming from his health care business — seems to be
weighing most heavily on people’s minds, according to Los Angeles rabbis
interviewed by the Forward. In traditional
Jewish law, if a Jew reports another Jew to the government, he is deemed a
moser, and in some interpretations, a moser’s actions are punishable by death.
The issue of mesira, or informing, has
prompted a round of collective soul-searching in segments of Los Angeles’s
Jewish community.
“People are very shell-shocked about the
whole thing on many levels,” said Rabbi Daniel Korobkin, a West Coast
representative of the Orthodox Union. “Number one, that our neighbors and
friends are implicated, and number two, that an act of mesira on this level was
perpetrated by one of our own.”
According to Korobkin, a Modern Orthodox rabbi who is also the spiritual
leader of Los Angeles’s Yavneh Hebrew Academy, “the majority” of Orthodox
rabbis in Los Angeles have already spoken about the tax-fraud case in the weeks
following the indictments, with some touching on the mesira issue and others
simply decrying the criminality of what allegedly occurred.
Weil declined to say exactly what he spoke of in his sermon on the case.
But according to Marc Rohatiner, a past president of Beth Jacob Congregation
who still serves on the synagogue’s executive board, and who attended the
January 11 Sabbath service, Weil did not address the issue of mesira.
Rohatiner, 54, said that Weil roundly condemned the alleged criminal behavior
and said that it could not be rationalized in any way. (THANK GOD) Weil also
reportedly emphasized that the Modern Orthodox community could not point
fingers at the ultra-Orthodox: “The people involved in this were people just
like us, clean-shaven, wearing the same type of kippot that we wear.”
On December 19, 2007, the U.S. Attorney General’s Office handed down a
37-count indictment to five ultra-Orthodox institutions and eight people,
including a chief rabbi of the Spinka, an ultra-Orthodox sect that originated
in Romania in the 19th century. The indictments allege that the chief rabbi,
Naftali Tzvi Weisz, and others, including four men from Los Angeles, were
engaged in a far-reaching money-laundering scheme. The scam, which started in
New York and stretched to Los Angeles and then to Tel Aviv, allegedly began in
1996 and involved millions of dollars being funneled through a web of five
Brooklyn-based charities. All defendants have pleaded not guilty to the charges.
A prominent Modern Orthodox rabbi here,
who requested anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the case, said that
Kasirer’s plea bargain has compounded his problems. “He’s certainly a persona
non grata across the board,” he said, referring to Kasirer. “Everybody is
just disgusted with the idea that a person tried to save himself by hurting
others.”
Kasirer could not be reached for comment.
In
21st-century America, the laws of mesira are up for a wide variety of
interpretations. While a moser in the Talmud could be killed for his actions,
and some in more right-wing corners still hold this to be the case, many others
contend that given the high comfort level of Jews in America today, the same
standard created when Jews lived under hostile governments cannot be applied. “The reason that mesira was seen as the equivalent of
a capital crime is that when you handed a Jew over to secular authorities,
courts and prisons were run like independent fiefdoms, and prisoners often did
not emerge alive,” said Yitzchok Adlerstein, adjunct chair of Jewish law and
ethics at Loyola Law School. “You were theoretically costing someone their
life, and that is not true in America,” he explained.
Kasirer, a fixture in this city’s Modern Orthodox community who has ties
across the denominational spectrum, was a regular attendee at Beth Jacob
Congregation for more than 10 years. His father, Jacob Kasirer, was a prominent
Jewish philanthropist who donated the funds to build the Bais Yaakov School for
Girls, located on Los Angeles’s Beverly Boulevard.
Since word of the scandal broke, Kasirer has requested that his name be
removed from the prayer books and from other dedications. The synagogue,
however, has not yet determined how it will proceed. Kasirer and his wife,
Debra, remain members of Beth Jacob, where her family has worshipped going back
multiple generations. A room at the synagogue bearing the Kasirer name was
dedicated six-and-a-half years ago by Kasirer’s grandchildren and by his wife.
Kasirer’s legal troubles stretch back more than 15 years. In 2004, the
Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil fraud complaint against the
health care entrepreneur, charging that from 1996 to 1999, he and his business
associates at Heritage Healthcare of America defrauded hundreds of municipal
bond investors who had invested $131 million to finance what they thought was
the building of a facility to aid people afflicted with Alzheimer’s Disease.
According to a 2003 report in the Los Angeles Business Journal, Kasirer’s wife
also received more than $1 million in salary and consulting fees from Heritage
Healthcare. Moreover, the article states, Kasirer cited a minimum of $122,208
in monthly living expenses.
Ultimately, in October 2004, Kasirer struck a deal with the federal
government in which he would plead guilty in exchange for serving as an
informant in another investigation. This led Kasirer to wear a wire for the
government until 2007, in order to help it nail down the Spinka tax-fraud case.
Wed. Jan 23, 2008
I have a question. Could a Rabbi explain this for me? Do the Jewish people have a double standard when it comes to the laws of this land so they don't have to obey the laws that are supposed to govern the rest of U.S.?
Lobbyist & Big Money are
leading U.S. to Slaughter
When are the Rabbis going to speak out
To blame the Jewish people for the carnage
that Hitler and the Nazi party inflicted would be insane, but not to acknowledge
the financial pain that the moneyed Jewish establishment inflicted on the
common working classes in Europe from prior to World War I until Hitler and his
enthusiasts extracted their version of revenge would also be foolish.
Catholics were not supposed to be involved
with usury (lending, loan-sharking) it was a religious “thing”, but the Jews
had no such religious compulsions so they moved in to “fill the void” with
predatory lending practices (kind of like our PAYDAY Loans) that was very destructive
to the European economy.
The Jewish bankers prior to, during, and
after World War I were loaning money to all sides, they didn’t care about the
war, it hasn’t their problem. Most Jewish bankers did not care who killed whom
so long as they could make money supplying either, or better yet both sides
with the materials and loans that the combatants needed.
In the end, the Jewish upper crust owned most
of what is considered the masterpieces of art, they had the money, they owned
prime real-estate, they used their money to influence policy, they moved into
prominent positions of authority in the law, arts, politics and of course
banking, these people were the movers and shakers of their time. Ghettos were
neighborhood distinctions and the Jewish ghettos were some of the better
neighborhoods of the time, not the slums that are envisioned now when one uses
the word.
Jewish religious beliefs at the time did not
condone involvement in fighting, it could be construed as a prequel to the 60’s
make love not war attitude. (This is the major reason they were so easily
rounded up and slaughtered by Hitler‘s enthusiasts.)
The “tattooing” or numbering of Jewish
“prisoners” has scary connotations today, especially with the advancement in
human chipping technology and legislation, it appears that in less then 4
generations the lessons of World War II have all but been forgotten.
What is being addressed and why should this
concern the Jewish community?
The Rabbis do not appear to be speaking out
and unfortunately, when Jewish people get greedy and Gentiles become an
actuarial (accounting-not making enough profits) problem history has this nasty
habit of repeating itself!
The tattooing of our time will probably be in
the form of a microchip embedded under the skin, something along the lines of
the veri-chip model (CEO Veri-chip; Jewish) currently being looked at by The
Department of Homeland Security run by Michael Chertoff, you guessed it,
Jewish. For Christians this will be very bad because of what is written in
Revelation section of the Bible.
The last 2 Federal Reserve Chairman’s have been Jewish, Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan and (how many of the
individuals running the Federal Reserve Banks are Jewish). They have moved this
country over $8 trillion further in debt, and cost U.S. over $7.5 trillion in
interest (usury) all in less then 30 years. Can you imagine the infrastructure
that could have been repaired had this country not blown $7.5 trillion in
interest?
The bonuses that Wall Street executives
installed on themselves is obscene, over $16.5 billion at Goldman Sachs, one
individual received the equivalent of $4.45 million a month bonus, I have yet
to meet a person worth $10,000 a month in base pay, Lehman Brothers and Bear
Stearns raked in approximately 12 billion each, lets not forget Hedge Funds.
Each of the top 10 managers received more then $200 million each. The high
number that are Jewish will eventually get noticed. Few of these people are
involved in manufacturing, but the amount tearing down companies, raiding
pension funds and outsourcing jobs because of leveraged buyouts is sickening.
Who cares if it is immoral or unethical just so long as it is legal.
The large numbers of Jewish people involved
in the media is shocking, owners of companies spewing the debauchery of MTV,
owners of recording operations spreading the Rap crap, the anything for a buck
mentality is disgusting. Who cares about morals or ethics just so long as its
legal.
We must not forget the warmongers, in the 60’s-70’s
the Jewish warmonger of prominence was Henry Kissinger, for the first decade of
2000 the Jewish warmongers were the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle,
Douglas Feith, Lewis Libby, John Bolton, Elliott Abrams, Michael Chertoff
unfortunately the list goes on and on. It makes you wonder how many of their
children are in front line combatant positions, seeing that they are such
proponents of war. Who cares if it is moral or ethical to kill others just so
long as its legal.
And of course the large number of overpriced
lawyers who don’t seem to care about morals or ethics but have “helped” in
writing the over 30 million laws that have turned the legal system upside down,
how many are Jewish, whatever happened to treating others as you want to be treated.
To blame all the people of the Hebrew faith
for the problems in the world is wrong, but to ignore the warnings foretold by
the prophets of old is foolish.
Most Jews ever set to enter
Congress
The Jerusalem Post
By HILARY LEILA KRIEGER
WASHINGTON Jan. 2007
The Orthodox Union's public policy director Nathan Diament, often more
at home with Republicans on church-state issues but supportive of some of the
Democrats' initial legislative efforts, such as stem cell research, also
expressed satisfaction with the incoming leadership.