Meir Pogrow: The defense given by a talmid of Pogrow and my rebuttal

I am publishing this letter I received recently because it contains a number of mistaken beliefs which seem to be widely shared. I am also adding responses to the letter writer's claims in the hope that it will educate people what actually happened. My information comes from sources close to the case. My response is in the indented paragraphs.

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Hi Rabbi Eidensohn

I consider myself a talmud of Rabbi Meir since i listen to his shiurim. i know him for over twenty years. I have worked with him on one project of harbatzas hatorah and know many people that are frum today due to him.

Regarding the accusations against him i understand you have posted a psak bais din. and i read it with great pain. i understand your job is to protect the public, the abused from the abuser.

My problem is with you. Since ive read some of the cases you have posted, one of them a relative of mine, you have provided both sides to be able to prove or disprove any evidence.

What has transpired here based on what i read is Tamara Schoor wrote a post facebook accusing someone with a chazkas kashrus. according to her post she went to rabbis five years ago. it took the rabbis over five years to come out with a statement a psak din (after she went public they went public) also in jpost. Jerusalem Post he responds about bais din.

That's simply a mistaken assumption. It isn't true that the rabbis were twiddling their thumbs for 5 years before they decided to act on her complain. It isn't true that Tamara Schoor had been pressuring rabbis for 5 years and they cruelly and irresponsibly refused to act until she went public. This is simply base slander. There is actually very little connection between Tamara Schoor and what Beis Din did. No matter what happens , someone can always ask why didn't it happen before. The fact is there were factors that came together now that didn't exist before. It took the time it needed to take - and not a second more.

Rav Shafran is a top-of the line Dayan in Israel who is well acquainted with what goes on and in addition knows perfect English. The other 2 Dayanim have about 30 years Dayanus experience--each. They have a solid reputation for competence and responsibility - despite what some bloggers and kvetches want to claim. The remaining rabbonim that signed on to the psak are all world-famous.What happened is very painful to some people, but let's not grasp at straws to create a conspiracy theory of rabbinic evil.

If it took the bais din and rabbis five years, or they have very little evidence, or too much but the rabbis covered this up for five years. regardless we have a problem.

How can an intelligent person,who claims he is ehrlich, make such a nonsensical claim while knowing NOTHING about what transpired. Please reread what I wrote above. There was no rabbinic cover up. It was not possible to deal effectively with the problem until now - despite what some bloggers without any proof claim. Instead of trusting some bloggers - and others with an agenda against rabbis with little or no information - to say that there was an conspiracy to do nothing - try and trust the rabbis who actually took care of the matter when they say that there was no way of doing this earlier. Saying more would violate promises of confidentiality. Just as there were bloggers and others in the community who suspected what was going on - but made no public outcry, there were rabbis who also suspected but were unable to bring about the necessary change until now.

Like Goldilocks and the three bears, there was neither too much evidence, nor too little-- but juuuuuuuuust riiiiight when the beis din issued its psak - but not before.

Ether way i believe your doing this lshem shumayim as i see your writing about rabanim and cases that others stay away from. the minimum i expected from you is to give R' Meir a chance to respond before posting. it might be too late since his life is destroyed anyways he has no other job skills other then torah having posted over six thousand shiurim and close to half a million sheilos on mishna and rambam calling him a rasha etc.in a public forum is very irresponsible.

Meir's life is destroyed because of  his horrible deeds, not because of what anyone else did in response

May it be a kappara for the lives he destroyed (after he does teshuvah)

I hope and pray this chilul hasham is false.

It is too late for your hope and prayers - the damage and the chilul haShem already exist.