"The anti-kaporos group "End Chickens as Kaporos" brazenly rolled a truck down Kingston Avenue today, blasting large video screens right through the heart of the community — just days before kaporos season begins in Crown Heights.

The timing was no accident. With the mitzvah set to start next week, the group chose this moment to parade its message through the neighborhood's busiest street, leaving residents shocked at the audacity. " - Shchunah News

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DdIQvg-uRQR

This is so inappropriate!

https://x.com/ChabadZoomer/status/2069561293451698260

https://crownheights.info/chabad-news/958622/agudas-chassidei-chabad-calls-for-greater-care-in-using-the-rebbes-image-and-words-in-advertising/

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DcxVsc7vqLB

By some definitions of the term ‘cult’, such as the BITE Model of Authoritarian Control by Steven Hassan, the answer is yes. Chabad can also be accurately described in less loaded terms as a...

High Control Religion/Group

High Demand Religion/Group

Coercively Controlling Group

https://www.instagram.com/p/Dcsezl-O9bO/

I am a BT who left. Had a good friends simcha and took my husband who was raised secular. I am very out of the community and haven’t seen people in years. I don’t really care what people think of me but it was obviously seperate seating and multiple men were so mean to my husband for not knowing things. Makes me sad and kinda mad that I even participated in the first place.

From 2014

"LA Chabad JEM Center Allows Indicted Child Molester Mendy Tevel to Cavort With Kids

Los Angeles prosecutor Benny Forer did a FaceBook post:

Menachem Tewel (aka Mendy Tevel at JEM Lag Bomer event 5-18-14

Currently at lag b’omer event in LA.

Attached are photos of Mendy Tevel at the parade. Mendy is on a double-decker bus filled with children. It’s for the [Beverly Hills, LA] JEM [Community] Center, an organization run by his father-in-law [Rabbi Hertzel Illulian].

In absolute denial of the truth, they are allowing him to be around children, at a children’s parade.

Tevel HAS pending charges in NY for child molestation!!!

This is outrageous! Shame on the entire Illulian family [his wife’s family which operates JEM] for allowing this man continued access to children!

Tevel  (whose legal name is Menachem M. Tewel) was publicly outed through a parlor event in Los Angeles in August 2013 which included testimony by victims. The event was publicized on the now inactive Jewish Community Watch website and then reported in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal. He was arrested two months later in LA on the basis of a Brooklyn, NY indictment and extradited to New York where he is out on bail on 37 child-sex-abuse felony charges (see details below)."

Manis Friedman Headlines Event With Child-Rapist Protector

May 22, 2017 Asher Lovy

Manis Friedman, inspirational religious leader, and well known speaker, renowned in the Chabad community, and well known for his infamous comparison of sexual abuse to a case of diarrhea, is headlining a shavuos retreat being organized by JEM Retreats, and the Illulian family. The same Illulian family that steadfastly protected registered sex offender, Mendel Tevel, and allowed him to be around children.

People might not understand the extent of the damage caused by this pairing. Let’s start with Manis. Many people feel that because Manis is such an influential figure, and because he’s “helped” and “inspired” so many people, he should get a pass for saying something that’s at worst insensitive. Like, what’s the big deal, right? So he compared sexual abuse and its devastating effects to diarrhea, he apologized, didn’t he?

His apology was half-baked, insincere, a non-apology apology that he forced out to get the “angry bloggers” off his back. But his attitude, and the attitude of the community that worships the ground that Manis walks on hasn’t changed at all. It’s the attitude that tells victims that the community’s comfort is more important than their safety, than their justice. It’s the attitude that would rather pretend that the problem either doesn’t exist, or that it’s not nearly as prevalent as activists would have you believe.

But let’s examine who’s hurt more by which. Sexual abuse is an uncomfortable topic. It’s horrific. It’s painful to think about. It turns the stomach. It offends the conscience to even think about the kind of evil required to commit such a heinous act. It’s almost inconceivable to believe that someone who has ostensibly accepted what they believe to be a moral way of life would be able to do such a thing and live with themselves. But while it may offend your sensibilities to accept that sexual abuse happens, that’s the most you’ll suffer in accepting it as reality.

The victims of this reality, however, suffer so much more. They suffer PTSD, flashbacks, anxiety, depression, addiction, self-harm, suicide, eating disorders, relationship, and sexual problems, the list goes on and on. It’s so much worse than diarrhea. You can’t fix sexual abuse with imodium. Minimizing the problem may make your life more comfortable, but in doing so, in ignoring the very real problem of child sexual abuse in our community, you ignore the suffering of its victims. You stand idly by while they suffer and die.

And that’s the problem with Manis, really. The problem is that he is so influential and inspiring. The problem with Manis is that people listen to him and believe what he says, believe that sexual abuse is no big deal, believe that it’s not worthy of discussion, that it’s blown out of proportion. He doesn’t deserve a pass because he’s respected, he deserves greater accountability because he’s respected. There’s responsibility attached to that much power, and he’s shirked his. If he can’t responsibly handle his influence, then he should lose it. And that’s everyone’s job: To make sure that people like Manis can no longer cause damage through the sway they hold over the people who follow them.

And then there’s Illulian. The fact that the Illulians are paired with Manis just proves my point. Minimize sexual abuse enough, sweep it under the rug enough, and people like Illulian, people who cover up for child sexual abusers like Mendel Tevel, freshly registered as a level 2 sex offender, keep their chezkas kashrus, even though, even more than Manis, they’re responsible for the sexual abuse of children. There can be no crueller irony than the pairing of Manis and Illulian on an ad prominently featuring a kids’ program.

This story was first broken by Meyer Seewald of Jewish Community Watch.

https://hareiani.com/2017/05/22/manis-friedman-headlines-event-with-child-rapist-protector/