Nish kefalach, right?

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I’m starting to think compounds and eruvs should be illegal, and I am a person who has always believed in small, hands-off government on both the Federal and State level.

I’m actually devoting most of my blog time these days to the soap opera that is our election. With characteristic generosity of spirit, I’ve tried to avoid dumping that crap on the heads of people here.

I keep saying I’m going to find a different topic to blog about and it keeps pulling me back in.

So how ’bout them Patriots?

I am moving outside the eruv on Friday so I get a big mazel tov. I will be close enough for my kids to go back and forth between me and my ex without having to live above orthodox jews who collect government assistance while he runs an import/export business to Israel from his house. ( he imports diapers and export potato chips for you Seinfeld fans).

I thing we will be seeing a kinder, sweeter Chutzpah for the new year.

Anyway, the “no shidduch” threat is a biggie. Twerski needed to protect his children. My children are going to go out to find their own soul mates someday. Hopefully they will be more successful than I was.

Tom, the essential difference here between what happened with the Catholic Church and the Haredim is at least the Catholics agree to abide by the Court system of the U.S. It is against Jewish law to sue a fellow Jew in civil court unless they receive a ruling from the Jewish Court that the defendant is not recognized as a a law abiding Jew.

When my landlord wanted to sue me in Housing Court for withholding my rent first he had to send me a letter in Yiddish from a Bais Din in New Square stating that I was in violation of the Bais Din. The fact that the Bais Din did not notify me before they made this decision or allow me to participate in the process of “decertifying ” me…well, that’s the evolved Halakic Court system for you.

Tom, your fascination with Jews is sicker than my Tom Jones fetish. If I was Catholica and living in Boston I’d only want to blog about the Red Sox, beer and lobster.

All it will take is one plaintiff, one enterprising lawyer, a $300 filing fee– or here, maybe a public official– and an internal solution is history. The graphic details will be all over the Post on a daily basis.

The truth, all the shocking, repellent details, will out. Nothing, of course, can be done about the past (apart from justly compensating victims). However, the community will start getting graded on how it responds. (As the bromide has it, the coverup is always worse than the crime.) In this regard, the community had better choose wisely. Here in Boston, for a period of 2-3 years, the Church consistently chose the worst option available to it– deepening the pain of victims and doing far more damage to its prestige than the abuse itself.

The perpetrators will have to take their medicine, a price will have to be paid, and many trusting, deferential, faithful people will have their faith shaken. This is the tragic and inescapable reality. This can’t be avoided.

But there is bad and there’s worse, and the private approach Anon suggests seems unlikely to be seen by everyone– including public authorities and the non-orthodox community– as satisfactory. A consensus must be arrived at that the truth is out, responsibility has been taken, victims have been acknowledged and helped, and measures implemented to keep (as best one can) this awful misconduct from happening again. That’s not going to happen behind closed doors.