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Shas Denies Links to New Jersey Money Laundering And Public Corruption Scandal
July 27, 2009 12:25 p.m. EST
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The Media Line Staff
Leaders of the ultra-orthodox Shas Party in Israel have denied any connection to the corruption scandal in New Jersey in which three city mayors and five ultra-orthodox rabbis were arrested last week.
The mayors of Hoboken, Ridgefield and Secaucus, New Jersey, and five rabbis were among 44 people charged with public corruption and money laundering following an FBI sweep last Thursday. The rabbis were rounded up at a New Jersey synagogue after morning prayers.
One of those arrested in the alleged money laundering case is Rabbi Eliahu Ben Haim, a close associate of Rabbi David Yosef, son of the Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.
Israeli media report that Rabbi Ben Haim has been involved in raising funds from rich Syrian-Jewish families in the U.S. for Shas institutions. Rabbi Ben Haim is also active in the Ovadia family's Yechave Daat organization. Rabbi David Yosef is the head of the Yechave Daat Yeshiva in Jerusalem.
According to media reports, Rabbi David Yosef rejected an attempt by the FBI's state witness turned informant, Solomon Dwek, to ensnare him in the scandal. Rabbi Yosef reportedly rejected a request from Dwek to help launder a check for $25,000.
Rabbi Edmund Nahum, another of those arrested last week, is also close to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and has been involved in raising funds for the Yosef family institutions.
Roei Lachmanovich, Shas Party leader Eli Yishai's spokesperson, said the fact that the wealthy Syrian and Hasidic communities supported Sephardi institutions in Israel did not mean that they were connected to Shas.
"There is no connection from the Shas Party organization to all of this mess in the United States," Lachmanovich told The Media Line, maintaining that Shas institutions received their budget directly from the Israeli government and did not need to fundraise in America.
Lachmanovich denied that any Shas institution had been involved in any money-laundering or illegal activity.
"All the Shas organization, the educational organizations, the non-formal education organization, the kindergarden organization, got their budget from the Israeli state by law," he said. "They have no connection with support by money from the United States."
The spokesperson said that Rabbi David Yosef was not a member of Shas and did not represent the party.
"Besides the fact that he is Rabbi Ovadia Yosef's son, he has no connection to the Shas organization," Lachmanovich said. "He has no formal connection to the Shas organization."
"There is complete separation between the political movement, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef's home and all these Sephardi yeshivot," he said. "They assume there is a connection between the Sephardi yeshivot to Shas, but there is no direct connection at all, not a formal connection."
"If someone will go and check the bank account of the Sephardi yeshivot and they found that someone was wrong, Mr Yishai and Rabbi Ovadia Yosef will be the first to say they should be checked by the police," he added.
A Brooklyn man, Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, was arrested and charged with trading in human organs. Evidence presented by prosecutors suggested he persuaded poor Israelis to sell their kidneys for $10,000 and sold them for $160,000. The transactions apparently depended on code words based on Jewish religious teachings.
In Jerusalem's ultra-orthodox community this week, Rosenbaum was described to The Media Line as a macher or fixer who assisted patients in finding appropriate medical treatment in the United States. The allegations from America were being dismissed as examples of anti-Semitism.
The New Jersey scandal with its possible Israeli connection erupted in the middle of a continuing dispute between the ultra-orthodox community in Jerusalem and the Israeli authorities over two apparently unlinked issues: the opening of a municipal parking lot on the Sabbath and the arrest of an ultra-orthodox mother suspected of starving her young son.
Both issues sparked riots in the ultra-orthodox areas of Jerusalem and further undermined trust between the community and the Israeli police, who are viewed with deep suspicion. Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior fellow at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies in Jerusalem, said there was a growing trend within some parts of the ultra-orthodox community to disregard secular law, despite a tenacious adherence to the minutest detail of Jewish religious ritual.
"You have a kind of borderless community that in its best expressions maintains international charity efforts that are second to none," Halevi told The Media Line. "The ultra-orthodox world is astonishing in its level of charity and that's the positive side of this world that the ultra-orthodox inhabit. But the dark side of this is a mentality that often too easily slides into rationalizations for acts that cannot be rationalized, with the idea that the end justifies the means."
"Here we are raising money for charitable institutions, and therefore we're allowed to cut corners," he continued. "I think that attitude is very widespread in the ultra-orthodox world and sometimes that attitude slips into the grotesque."
"This is a problem that certainly is not confined to the ultra-orthodox," Halevi added. "One can find that problem in every religion. My hope, my expectation, is that there will be a serious soul-searching within the ultra-orthodox communities in which people ask themselves: if we insist that we represent higher values, a higher calling, then why is it that so many of us repeatedly fail to uphold the most minimal ethical principles?"
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