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| Goldstein/Adler coded text message. Click to enlarge (JTA) |
One may recall that in April of 2019, Yisroel Goldstein was the Rabbi of a Shul in Poway, California when on the last day of Pesach, when:
...a 19 year old gunman broke into (his) Shul and started shooting. According to one report I saw - it was at about the time in the morning where they were going to say Yizkor…
The gunman shot and killed Lori Gilbert-Kaye - just as the Shul’s spiritual leader, Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein was about to re-enter the sanctuary. He had left to wash his hands for the service and witnessed it.
Rabbi Goldstein immediately attempted to stop the shooter from entering the sanctuary – grabbing the gun whereupon his two middle fingers were shot off. A security guard (a US military veteran) was by then able to respond to the fleeing shooter but was not able to shoot him – hitting only his vehicle. Shortly thereafter the gunman surrendered to police.
Pretty heroic stuff, right? At great personal risk of injury or death, Rabbi Goldstein acted immediately to save lives. For which he paid a price. Rabbi Goldstein is someone we should certainly be proud of and salute. He made a real Kiddush HaShem.
But his ‘hero’ status has been tarnished by what he was caught was doing behind the scenes at the time of the attack. From JTA:
Elliot Adler, was sentenced to one year and one day in prison on Friday for his involvement in the scheme. The rabbi involved, Yisroel Goldstein, who was charged in July 2020, was sentenced to 14 months in prison in January.
In what prosecutors are calling a “90/10” scheme, Adler made donations to Chabad of Poway, of which Goldstein funneled 90% of the funds back to Adler, keeping another 10% for himself. This scheme began in 2010 with amounts in the tens of thousands of dollars, snowballing into larger amounts over time. Prosecutors also say that Adler falsely claimed the fraudulent donations as tax-deductible on his tax returns, reducing the amount of personal income tax he would have to pay by a total of about $500,000 between 2011 and 2017.
One can legitimately ask how it is possible for someone whose ethics made him risk his life to save the life of another human being did not have the ethics to not steal from the government?
I wish I had the answer to that. But all I can do is speculate about the nature of those who behave in both heroic and nefarious ways. Rabbi Goldstein is not the only rabbi caught with his hands in the public till. One might recall that in 2009 the Spinka Rebbe had virtually the same scheme. He too was caught and spent some time in prison.
Prior to serving his sentence the Spinka Rebbe made a public apology at a dinner hastily arranged by Agudah for the Chilul HaShem that resulted. But I found it troubling that he did not actually say that what he did was wrong. Almost as if the issue was getting caught. Even though his apology included warning others not to do what he did, it seemed more like he thought they would get caught if they tried. Not that it was anything inherently wrong to steal from the government.
It’s bad enough when any Jew commits fraud. But when a rabbi does it, it increases the Chilul HaShem immensely!
It would appear that the Hashkafa in some Orthodox circles is that defrauding the government is OK if you don’t get caught. One can be a saintly rabbi whose charitable institutions have helped thousands of Jews and believe funding those institutions with ill gotten government gains is OK. If a saintly Orthodox rabbi or a heroic one can do it surely the common Orthodox Jew can
Perhaps they rationalize that there is so much government waste, why not funnel some of that money where it can really do some good?! Or they rationalize that since there are so many ‘lowlife’ drug addicts and unwed single mothers benefitting from government largesse why not funnel some of that money into their coffers in order to help the poorest of Jews that really need it?
But that is exactly what it is. A rationalization. Fraud is not permitted in Halacha. Stealing is a biblical level sin – even if it is from non Jews.
Compounding that sin is the massive Chilul HaShem that results when rabbinic leaders get caught doing it. And if it is someone like Poway’s Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, the net Chilul HaShem is even greater. Because it tells the world that even the most heroic rabbis among us believe that defrauding the government is quite in line with Jewish ethics.
The fallout of such a Chilul HaShem is that all the antisemitic tropes used by neo Nazis and the like about devious Jews being conmen cheating honest, God fearing Christians is reinforced by rabbis that do things like this.
Unfortunately the mentality among many Orthodox Jews that defrauding the government is OK is more common than I would have ever thought. I recall that when the story about the Spinka Rebbe broke, a lot of Orthodox Jews were more upset at the Moser (individual that informed on him) than they were about the Spinka Rebbe’s fraudulent scheme.
It is also quite curious that Rabbi Goldstein did not learn his lesson from the very public Chilul HaShem made by the Rebbe. I guess he thought he was going to be smarter about it by using code words - and not get caught. (Isn’t that what they all think?!) But he did caught . And we are all paying a price. A price that need not have been paid had Halacha- Jewish law - been followed.