Kiryas Joel Rocked By Federal Raid. The Jewish Week. April 6, 2001
"Federal agents converged on the upstate Chasidic community of Kiryat Joel last Thursday, sealing off part of the community in an early morning raid to catch an alleged ring of swindlers."

Voter Fraud in KJ Continues, Investigation Shows. The Times Herald-Record [New Jersey], October 17, 1997
"Voter fraud in Kiryas Joel is more widespread than once suspected and persisted last year despite officials' assurances they would stop it. The fraud extends into three counties, involves more than 170 fraudulent votes and occurred in most of the village's election districts. Little has changed since The Times Herald-Record last year uncovered what authorities say is the largest double-voting scandal of its kind in New York. In fact, it could happen again in next month's elections. The Record reported last year that 84 people's names and dates of birth were used 121 times to vote in two different places - Kiryas Joel and Brooklyn - in the same election. In other words, each name counted for two votes."

Judge Slams Silence on $42m Fraud. The age.com [Australia], October 14, 2000
"The true beneficiaries of a $42 million money-laundering scheme were at large and masquerading as reputable citizens, a judge said when jailing the head of a Melbourne Jewish family who controlled the conspiracy ... Transfers of up to $7 million a year before [Nachum] Goldberg's arrest in 1997 were made under the guise of a fake religious charity, United Charity, and secreted in bank accounts in Israel and Switzerland. During the long investigation and court proceedings, the Goldbergs refused to give information that would identify the tax evaders whose money was laundered ... The judge criticised the Israeli Government over the case. "When the investigators tried to follow the money trail they hit a brick wall in the form of the refusal of the Israeli Government or the Israel banks to cooperate," he said. He said Goldberg's accomplice in Israel was his brother David, a bank manager."

Millionaire NY Fraud Suspect on the Run. Line of Duty, November 15-21, 1999
"A millionaire businessman who once owned part of Studio 54 and was partners with the owners of the Scores strip club is the target of an international manhunt after jumping bail in Florida. The search is on for convicted millionaire Sholam Weiss. The FBI and insurance regulators are offering $120,000 reward for information leading to the capture of Sholam Weiss, 45, who fled Oct. 18 while a federal jury weighed his fate in the nation's largest-ever insurance fraud. Weiss was convicted Nov. 1 — along with three of his four co-defendants — of racketeering, fraud, money laundering and other charges and faces life in prison in the looting of the National Heritage Life Insurance Co. The company collapsed in 1995 under the weight of the $450 million theft. Many of the company's 35,000-40,000 policy holders lost much of their life savings. 'This man was essentially a financial predator, and National Heritage was only the last in a long string of victims,' said Assistant U.S. Attorney Judy Hunt."

Sheetrit Appeals 'Berger Law' Vote. Jerusalem Post, June 28, 2001
"[Chaim] Berger, 75, fled to Israel just before US authorities issued a warrant for his arrest on charges of fraud and forging documents. According to the United States, Berger and several other members of the New Square, New York, hassidic community bilked the government out of millions of dollars from various assistance programs. The most important of the affairs involved education grants for an institution that essentially existed only on paper. Berger allegedly arranged for members of the community to be registered as students for the institution which he claimed was a large college, when in fact it was a small yeshiva. The students received grants for their tuition and the money was allegedly returned to Berger and his friends and used to build up New Square institutions. Another of the charges against him involved fraud against the Small Business Association. In the 1990s, the US authorities launched a massive investigation against Berger and his colleagues. In 1997, shortly before the indictment against him was served, he fled to Israel and became an Israeli citizen."

Robin Hood Rabbi Jailed in Israel. Toronto Star [Canada] [article posted here at a discussion forum], May 26, 2000
"An ex-Montrealer known as the Robin Hood Rabbi has drawn a seven-year term in Israel for fraud involving an estimated $200 million ... The rabbi [Joseph Prushinowski] allegedly distributed his ill-gotten gains to unwitting Hasidic communities around the globe for housing, education and charitable causes. Prushinowski lived in the Montreal area with his wife and 12 children from the early 1960s until he fled in 1987. The only exception was a three-year prison sentence served in New York in the early 1980s for obtaining $1.5 million US through worthless cheques. While here, he conducted worldwide frauds by telephone, fax and telex. When he fled to Israel, he was wanted by RCMP, the FBI and Scotland Yard as well as New York and Dutch police. He was also profiled on the popular U.S. TV program Unsolved Mysteries."

Group Says Aide 'Tarred' N.Y. Chasids. [Jewish] Forward, February 2, 2001
"A federal prosecutor who objected to several names on President Clinton's last-minute clemency list is now under attack from Jewish groups that accuse her of 'tarring' all Jews as potential criminals. The prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Deborah Landis of New York, reportedly urged the White House in a January 16 letter not to commute the sentences of four chasidic men convicted of stealing government student-aid and other funds, claiming the clemency would 'send a message to that worldwide community that its pursuit of its own religious customs justifies fraud against the government.' The letter, obtained by the Associated Press but not released, prompted angry retorts from two groups that seldom agree with one another: the Jewish Council on Public Affairs, a liberal-leaning coalition of national agencies, and Agudath Israel of America, an Orthodox advocacy group. Both accused Ms. Landis of stereotyping a group because of the actions of a few ... In a possible reflection of the sensitive nature of the dispute, however, no other Jewish organizations were willing to comment on the Landis letter, including such normally outspoken agencies as the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Congress. The ADL had objected once before to a federal investigation of student-aid fraud by Orthodox groups, arguing that a 1993 probe risked creating an image that such fraud was characteristic of a particular community, only to be told by federal officials that it was."

Spain Holds Israeli Drug Lord Wanted by U.S.
[Associated Press/Haaretz] May 23, 2001
"An Israeli [Oded Tuito] described as a major international smuggler of the drug Ecstasy is in custody in Spain awaiting a court decision on an American request for his extradition ...Spanish newspapers report that Tuito ran a massive smuggling operation in Europe, Israel, and the United States ... Israeli crime syndicates with links to Russian mobs are the primary source of Ecstasy smugglied in the United States, according to the DEA."

'Sammy the Bull' Trial Lifts Veil on Israelis in Ecstasy Trade.
[Jewish] Forward, January 19, 2001
"A celebrated mob informant's trial on drug-distribution charges is opening a window on an aspect of the drug trade that many New Yorkers would rather ignore. According to federal and local law enforcement officials, Israeli criminals have cornered the market on the drug ecstasy, controlling by some accounts as much as 75% of the American market ... According to the Drug Enforcement Agency's web page, 'In recent years, Israeli organized crime syndicates, some composed of Russian émigrés associated with Russian organized crime syndicates, have forged relationships with Western European traffickers, and gained control over a significant share of the European market. The Israeli syndicates are currently the primary sources to U.S. distribution groups." ... 'There are a lot of Israeli criminals in the three major hubs, New York, Miami and Los Angeles, so they didn't have to reinvent the wheel," Mr. Abramovsky said ... In July 1999, after a 21-month investigation, a joint federal-state organized crime-drug enforcement task force uncovered a smuggling operation that relied mostly on carriers of an unexpected nature in the drug business: young chasidic men. ... Sean Erez, an Israeli who according to the authorities ran the ring, is still in Amsterdam, where authorities are weighing a request for extradition to the United States. In February 2000, another ecstasy ring ran by Israeli citizens was exposed in Queens, N.Y. The group, allegedly headed by Oshri Amar, the son of a famous 1950s-era Israeli pop singer, was alleged by authorities to be distributing MDMA in clubs on the East Coast and in California. Some of these clubs made huge headlines in the New York press in the mid-1990s, where they were dubbed 'drug bazaars' ... Drug officials assert that additional side effects include anxiety and depression, and in the long run also permanent brain damage. The ecstasy trade is building a new reputation for Israeli criminal muscle, especially when combined with Russian gangs."

Stripper-Hasid Connection Bared by 'Ecstasy' Bust. New York Post. May 25, 2001
"An international 'ecstasy' kingpin [Israeli Oded Tuito], busted for smuggling the mind-bending pill into New York, was using leggy strippers, Hasidic teens in yarmulkes, and senior citizens as New Age drug mules, authorities say ... An Israeli national, named Sean Erez, allegedly tutored by Tuito in ecstasy smuggling, had risen through the ranks of Tuito's drug mob ... [Erez] hired Hasidic high-school boys ... These are kids who spend hours a day in the synagogue ... Federal Judge Leo Glasser ... sentenced nearly a dozen local Hasidic men. In March, Miami authorities busted a 71-year old retired Queens tailor ... Machloof Ben-Chitrit."

Ecstasy Lord Cops Plea Deal. New York Post, June 28, 2001
"An international "ecstasy" kingpin, whose organization flooded the United States with the popular club drug, is facing 17 years in prison after copping a plea in federal court yesterday. Prosecutors charge Jacob Orgad, 45, sold hundreds of thousands of pills to Israeli national Ilan Zarger. Zarger pleaded guilty in January to overseeing a ring that the feds say supplied Salvatore 'Sammy Bull' Gravano."

Two Israelis Arrested in Largest Drug Bust in NYC History.
Jerusalem Post, July 20, 2001
"Two Israeli citizens were arrested Tuesday night in Manhattan on drug possession charges after police seized more than a million Ecstasy tablets, the largest drug bust in New York City history. Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik announced Wednesday that David Roash, 25, and Israel Ashkenazi, 28, both of Tel Aviv, were being held in Queens Criminal Court pending drug possession charges. The two face eight and a half years to life in prison if convicted. The pink, blue, and white Ecstasy pills, which weighed a total of 450 pounds and have a street value $40 million, and nearly $200,000 in cash were found in a studio apartment near the financial district."

International Ecstasy Ring Smashed By Police. Jerusalem Post, August 2, 2001
"An Ecstasy-smuggling ring has been cracked by the Israel Police, in collaboration with its counterparts in the US and Europe. Seventeen Israelis are being held in Spain and the US, and more arrests are expected. The ring is believed to have operated for a year. The investigation began in March, when the Northern District police learned that an Ecstasy ring led by Oded Tuito was still active, although he was under arrest in Barcelona on different charges. The district passed information it had to the various countries concerned, and set up joint surveillance operations. A big break came when three Israelis - Eitan and Erez Noi and Yosef Hotvashvilli - were arrested in Barcelona for several jewelry-store heists, which turned up enough evidence to arrest Michel Elkayam - believed to have led the Ecstasy ring in lieu of Tuito - and his accomplices in North America."

A Scourge of Drugs Strikes a Pious Place. U.S.News, March 6, 2000
"Over the past year, the number of calls about children abusing drugs in Orthodox communities 'has skyrocketed,' says Benzion Twerski, a physician who runs the substance-abuse program at Trinitas Hospital in Elizabeth, N.J. Among the reported problems: young Orthodox dealers selling drugs such as ecstasy, heroin, and crack cocaine to their schoolmates, and Orthodox drug users stealing from their parents to support their habits. The Drug Enforcement Administration last fall reported that Russian and Israeli organized-crime groups had become the major transporters of the stimulant ecstasy into the United States. Prosecutors say these syndicates sometimes sell to neophyte dealers in New York's Orthodox communities. In January, federal investigators charged a Brooklyn businessman and four other ultra-Orthodox Jewish men with conspiring to sell 180,000 ecstasy pills to an informant, then laundering the money through a local Jewish religious school. Last summer, federal authorities indicted seven people, at least two of them Orthodox teenagers, in a scheme to supply millions of ecstasy tablets to partyers at late-night clubs in New York City and Miami Beach. The feds say dealers recruited young men from ultra-Orthodox Hasidic sects in Brooklyn, believing that their black hats, dark suits, side curls, and religious affiliation would throw off cops. And just last week, six Israeli nationals and more than 20 of their alleged buyers and suppliers were arrested for allegedly carrying out a multimillion-dollar scheme using young Hasidic and other ultra-Orthodox drug couriers."

Heroin Scandal Rocks London's Devout Jewish Community.
The Independent [London], [posted here at the Media Awareness Project, a drug policy reform group], July 25, 1998
"The Orthodox Jewish community has been shocked by a series of arrests of its members for alleged heroin smuggling. Police and Customs inquiries are centering on a drugs link between Israel, Antwerp and London ... Police in several European countries began to suspect that the diamond area of Antwerp was becoming an international centre for drug smuggling two years ago when an Orthodox Jewish man from Antwerp was arrested at Ramsgate. Dror Hazenfratz ... from Antwerp, was jailed for 11 years for trying to smuggle heroin ... Hazenfratz, who was born in Haifa and holds an Israeli passport as well as a Belgian identity card, appeared in Canterbury court wearing traditional dress and carrying the Talmud ... Hazenfratz said he had been told to meet a Georgian Orthodox Jew at a north London hotel. The ultimate destination of the drugs was reputedly David Santini, a Glaswegian who, at the time, was Scotland's leading heroin dealer ... British drugs officers suspect they are seeing the beginning of a new drug operation involving Antwerp's Orthodox Jews and the Russian Mafia ... Last week, evidence of the violence associated with drug crime surfaced again in Antwerp. A Jewish trader in precious metals in the city, Rachmeil 'Mike' Brandwain, also reputed to be a leading figure in the Russian Mafia, was shot dead."

The Jewish Club in Cell Block 2. The Jerusalem Report, December 20, 1999
"Shimon Dahan is doing time ... [in] Bangkok’s Bangkwang Central Prison for the past six years. Dahan is serving a 100-year sentence for smuggling a derivative of the poppy - heroin ... Among the other inmates in his Block 2 are three fellow Jews - all also lifers for drug offenses ... They have pulled together and carved out a life of comparative luxury for themselves. With cash sent in by friends and relatives, they bought themselves into the same cell, then bribed the guards to have only 10 other inmates in their 215-square-foot quarters, not the standard 20, and allow them sleeping mats, bottled water, and a diet of meat, fruit and vegetables. Two years ago, the four 'leased' a $500-a-year cell for their 'Jewish House.' It’s an exclusive club equipped with a table and chairs, bookshelves and a color TV ...The little brotherhood's membership badge is the yarmulkes they wear inside their sanctuary, where they have painted a large Star of David on the floor. Here they hold Shabbat services and eat kosher food sent in by the rabbi ... In his five years there, Stephen Roye has deteriorated from an Emmy-winning American television producer to a fading shadow. As a freelancer who had produced several anti-drug documentaries in the 1980s, he said he volunteered to run heroin from Bangkok to his native Los Angeles. He hoped it would revive his flagging career by getting the inside story of drug smuggling. He got no further than Bangkok airport."

15 Most Wanted Fugitive Steven Wolosky Arrested at Bus Stop.
U.S. Marshals' Service Press Release, June 9, 2000
"United States Marshals Service Director John W. Marshall announced that alleged narcotic trafficker Steven M. Wolosky was arrested yesterday in Manchester, New Hampshire. Wolosky, led a drug ring responsible for the importation of more than 400,000 pounds of marijuana and hashish from Colombia and Thailand. 'He was a top ranking figure in an international maritime smuggling and distribution ring," said Marshall. 'His organization includes another TOP 15 MOST WANTED fugitive, Mark Stephen Gayer. Both men have been sought for more than a decade.' Wolosky and Gayer were indicted in March 1988, and later released on $500,000 bonds. Upon release, the two attempted to fake their deaths in a ruse to convince law enforcement that they had died in a boating accident off the California coast."

Mr. Nice. This is the entrepreneurial home page of Howard Marks, a famous British-based drug dealer who is now a performer and drug advocate after his release from an Indiana prison. He served seven years of a 25-year sentence for his role in the international drug trade. "At the height of his smuggling operation, Mr. Marks was reputedly responsible for the majority of the marijuana smoked in the western world in the 1970s and early 1980s." [Hull Daily Mail, 2-7-2000, p. 4] "The head of the United States Drug Enforcement Agency in Miami once called Marks 'the Marco Polo' of drug trafficking'." [Dening, Penelope. The Irish Times, September 7, 1996] Information about a Jewish heritage is hard to come by. We may note, however, that Marks' daughter Myfanwy lives in Israel. [Campbell, Duncan. The Guardian {London}.Second Front: Howard's Way ..., April 26, 1995, p.12]

Drug Lords Enjoy Mot of George's Kindness. Daily Illini, July 14, 1992
"Read about Max Mermelstein (the 'godfather of cocaine') who co-authored the book, The Man Who Made it Snow. This sweetheart did not merely smuggle 56 tons of coke into our country; he also admitted in sworn testimony at the Noriega trial to involvement in a number of murders. He also bribed officials in three different Latin American countries. His possible sentence of 90 years was reduced to time served (2 years, 21 days), and the man walked in return for sticking it to Noriega. Mermelstein did forfeit $1 million in drug proceeds, but made much more that and also cashed in $700,000 in U.S. reward money, plus about that much more from WPP. Why did he get so much from WPP? Because you and I paid for all 17 members of his family and, as he testified, 'some of them had babies' and he's 'not sure where the number stands now.' I will never again claim that George Bush has no child-care policy. You couldn't prove it by looking at the Mermelsteins." Mermelstein was once described by his lawyer as 'just a nice Jewish guy who got into the wrong industry.' [Murphy, Kim. One Man's Word Against the World's Most Dangerous Cocaine Cartel. Los Angeles Times, July 6, 1987, pt. 1, p. 3] 

The 20th Century in Review (1980-89). San Diego Metropolitan
"Richard Silberman, San Diego mover and shaker, is busted by the FBI for laundering what he believed to be drug money. Sentenced to 46 months in prison, he and wife Susan Golding [the mayor of San Diego, and also Jewish] divorce."

Berezovsky's Daughter Arrested. St. Petersburg Times [Russia], May 15, 1998 "Yelizaveta Berezovskaya, the daughter of [Jewish Russian] billionaire tycoon-turned-politician Boris Berezovsky, who was detained in St. Petersburg last Saturday for cocaine possession, may be released with only a fine despite carrying an amount large enough to be punishable by up to three years in jail, according to the city's police chief. Anatoly Ponidelko told Interfax that because Berezovskaya, 27, handed the cocaine to police voluntarily, she will avoid a jail sentence, in spite of strict new drug laws enacted in Russia just last month."

The Jewish Laundry of Drug Money, translated from the Hebrew by Israel Shahak, former head of the Israel Civil Rights Association. [This piece, one of the first looks in English at the Jewish/Israeli involvement in the international drug scene, originally appeared in the Israeli magazine Maariv, September 2, 1994. It can be found here at Zionism and Israeli Apartheid, a pro-Palestinian site]
"In recent months the [US government] Eldorado agents discovered a new center of operations. It is termed The Cocaine Triangle. Its sides are: Colombian drug barons, Israeli-Jewish money launderers and Jewish-Russian mafiosi. The Colombians funnel the money, the Israelis launder it, the Russian mafiosi (who have recently overrun New York in droves) provide the security and the muscle. A New York journalist recently told 'Ma'ariv'; 'The Israeli Jews are gaining notoriety in the money laundering market. You need only look at the list of arrests and the inditements of the past 3 years, in order to grasp the enormous scope of Israeli involvement in that field.'".

The Most Dangerous Mobster in the World.
Village Voice [New York], May 20-26, 1998
"The enigmatic leader of the [Russian] Red Mafia is a 52-year-old Ukrainian-born Jew named Semion Mogilevich. He is a shadowy figure known as the ''Brainy Don''--he holds an economics degree from the University of Lvov--and until now, he has never been exposed by the media. But the Voice has obtained hundreds of pages of classified FBI and Israeli intelligence documents from August 1996, and these documents--as well as recent interviews with a key criminal associate and with dozens of law enforcement sources here and abroad--describe him as someone who has become a grave threat to the stability of Israel and Eastern Europe ... The FBI and Israeli intelligence assert that he traffics in nuclear materials, drugs, prostitutes, precious gems, and stolen art. His contract hit squads operate in the U.S. and Europe. He controls everything that goes in and out of Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport, a ''smugglers' paradise,'' says [Monya] Elson. Mogilevich bought a bankrupt airline in a former Central Asian Soviet republic for millions of dollars in cash so he could haul heroin out of the Golden Triangle. Most worrisome to U.S. authorities is Mogilevich's apparently legal purchase of virtually the entire Hungarian armaments industry, jeopardizing regional security, NATO, and the war against terrorism."

Telling His Story. ABC news, September 23, 2000
"The man suspected of being at the center of an alleged plot to launder as much as $15 billion through the Bank of New York by the Russian mob today denied any involvement in the scandal that has rocked the international financial establishment. In an exclusive interview with ABCNEWS’ Gillian Findlay, [Jewish Russian mobster] Semyon Mogilevich — who describes himself as a publisher and consultant to a cereal company — says the allegations have ruined him."

Red Mafiya, by Robert Friedman. TimeWarner. [sample chapter]
"In the 1970s, more than forty thousand Russian Jews settled in Brighton Beach, the formerly stolid working-class Jewish neighborhood that inspired Neil Simon's gentle play Brighton Beach Memoirs. It was under the shadow of the elevated subway tracks on Brighton Beach Avenue, bustling with Russian meat markets, vegetable pushcarts, and bakeries, that the Russian gangsters resumed their careers as professional killers, thieves, and scoundrels. By the time of [Monya] Elson's arrival, Brighton Beach had already become the seat of the dreaded Organizatsiya, the Russian Jewish mob."

Red Mafiya: How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America.
New York Review of Books, November 16, 2000 [book review, posted at Center for Defense Information/Johnson's Russia List]
"Whatever the American laws, a successful campaign against Russian mobsters will require the cooperation of other governments, particularly those of Russia and Israel, the two countries that are now the principal residences of most Russian crime bosses ...'Of all the nations where the Russian mob has established a presence, none has been more deeply compromised than the State of Israel,' [Robert] Friedman writes, adding that the Russian mafia has 'become a grave threat to the stability of Israel.' Although this may be a bit hyperbolic, the Russian mafia does have a strong, safe base in Israel -- a story that American and Israeli journalists have largely overlooked. One FBI report observes, for example, that most members of Mogilevich's criminal organization have Israeli passports. And Jonathan Winer told Friedman (when Winer was still the State Department's crime expert), 'There is not a major Russian organized crime figure whom we are tracking who does not also carry an Israeli passport.'"

The Traffickers. Russian Crime Groups and Syndicates. U. S. Department of State
"The Director of Operation Odessa, a Florida task force designed to combat Russian organized crime, believes that individual criminals, not necessarily organized crime, are trafficking Russian women to Florida. He claims that women are being trafficked to Miami, Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, Jackson, Palm Beach, and increasingly the Florida panhandle. In his opinion, Russian entrepreneurs, with ties to Russian organized crime, are importing women for Florida's sex industry. For example, one Russian, Sergey Skobeltsyn, with alleged ties to the Russian organized crime group Kazanskaya, bought two strip clubs, Pure Platinum and Solid Gold, for $8 million dollars in late 1996. And Ludwig Fainberg [who once served in the Israeli army; Navarro, Mireya. New York Times, 3-7-97, p. A22], a Russian mafia figure with alleged ties to Colombian drug traffickers, was also heavily involved in running a strip club called Porkys, which likely involved trafficked women. FBI headquarters also has information that the following major Russian organized crime syndicates— the Izmailovskaya, Dagestantsy, Kazanskaya, and Solntsenskaya— are involved in the prostitution industry throughout the United States. Given the way these organized crime syndicates operate overseas and the brutality of these organizations, it is likely that this involvement in the US includes trafficking in women through the use of deception, threats, and violence."

Russian 'Mafiya' Takes on NY. The Russia Journal. May 15, 2000
"Police and investigators in New York told The Observer that they are connecting a sudden string of brutal murders to the mighty Russian 'Mafiya' who are taking over the city's underworld and pose what one source calls 'by far our greatest threat to stability and the rule of law' ... Ex-Bank of New York Executive Lucy Edwards [born Ludmilla Pritzker] and Peter Berlin admitted to masterminding the largest money-laundering scheme in U.S. history involving as much as $10 billion in 160,000 wire transfers, mostly connected to the Russian mob, corrupt Russian banks and their gun-toting clients. Two other murders have been handed over to the crime squad specializing in the Russian mafia. Orthodox Russian Jew Mark Simon's bullet-riddled body was found last month. He was allegedly involved in massive credit card fraud."

Russian Jewish Leader Charged with Kidnap.
The Independent [Great Britain], January 25, 2001
"The deputy head of the Russian Jewish Congress, Mikhail Mirilashvili, has been arrested in St Petersburg and charged with kidnapping two people. The chairman of the congress, Vladimir Gusinsky, a media magnate, is already under house arrest in Spain after Moscow demanded his extradition. Police say the two cases are unconnected, but the Russian Jewish community will be alarmed that the authorities are pursuing two of its most prominent members. Mr Mirilashvili, who holds joint Israeli and Russian citizenship [so does Gusinksky], was due to leave Russia this week with the Israeli President, Moshe Katzav, who is on a state visit. Mr Mirilashvili is a director of the St Petersburg company Russian Video, which was bought by Media-Most, controlled by Mr Gusinsky, in 1997. Mr Gusinsky was later accused of defrauding the state by buying the company for $10m (£6.6m) - well below its real value. Over the past year the Kremlin has relentlessly feuded with Mr Gusinsky and Media-Most, which owns much of the independent media in Russia, because of its criticism of the government."

Establishing Boundaries. High Profile Cases Refocus Attention on Sexual Misconduct.
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. December 15, 2000
"For those who look up to the American Jewish clergy, it has not been a good year. Last week, one of the Reform movements most prominent rabbis was suspended from the movement's rabbinical association for past sexual misconduct ... The news about [Rabbi Sheldon] Zimmerman came on the heels of several other widely publicized incidents involving Jewish clergy."

Sexual Abuse by Rabbis. Lilith [Jewish Womens' Magazine] No date.
"The denials and cover-ups by religious authorities in the case of Rabbi Baruch Lanner closely parallel a report Lilith Magazine has published, investigating accusations of sexual misconduct by the rabbi and popular singer Shlomo Carlebach. Lilith, the independent Jewish women's magazine, exposed "The Paradoxical Legacy" of the late Rabbi Carlebach, known around the world for his neo-Chassidic spirituality, his charm and his music. Like Lanner's, Carlebach's alleged sexual misconduct was denied, ignored and covered up by his partisans. And like the Jewish Week's editor, Lilith's staff was beseeched not to publish, for fear that the allegations brought against Carlebach would undo all the ostensible good he had done."

Rabbi Robert Kirschner Apologizes.
Jewish Bulletin of Northern California, October 18, 1996
"[Rabbi Robert] Kirschner was once a rising star in the Reform [Judaism] movement. While still in his 30s, he became the religious leader of one of the two largest synagogues in Northern California and the youngest rabbi ever to head such a sizable Reform congregation. He was destined for a major leadership role in the Reform movement. Some say he would have been on the short list of candidates to succeed Rabbi Alexander Schindler as president of the movement's Union of American Hebrew Congregations. But after serving Emanu-El for 11 years, Kirschner suddenly resigned from his pulpit on New Year's Day 1992 amid accusations from three congregants and a temple employee that he had sexually exploited or harassed them. Eight other women later came forward to the temple board to complain about the rabbi's conduct, including members of his congregation and two students from the Graduate Theological Seminary in Berkeley. According to parties involved, at least three of the accusers later reached financial settlements with the temple's insurance company."

Bibliography of Sources on Sexual and Domestic Violence in the Jewish Community. Minnesota Center Against Violence and Abuse [linked from Women in Judaism, Winter 1999]. A listing of articles -- 25 paper pages long -- that addresses this subject.

Synagogue Sexton Guilty of Pedophilia. Haaretz [Israel], June 22, 2001
"A garbage truck driver with a part-time job as a synagogue sexton in a town in the center of the country was convicted yesterday by a Jerusalem District Court for sexually assaulting children who went to synagogue to pray with him ... At least three children were involved, with one, the 13-year-old, being the son of another synagogue official. That boy was so disturbed by the sexual abuse that he took up drugs, and the sexton then exploited that knowledge to blackmail the youth into more sexual intercourse. The other two children were subject to his fondling, often on the back porch of the synagogue during prayers, in exchange for sweets."

'Healer' Convicted of Sexual Assault and Rape.
Haaretz [Israeli newspaper], June 4, 2001
"A 44-year-old man from Ma'aleh Efraim who passed himself off as a rabbi and healer was yesterday found guilty by the Tel Aviv District Court of sexually assaulting two women and raping one of them ... Cohen claimed to have been blessed by God with healing powers and met with people suffering from a variety of ailments, physical and otherwise, twice a week in a room in a house in Rosh Ha'ayin."

Rape By Any Name. Citizens' Commission on Human Rights
"Dr. Jules Masserman, past president of the American Psychiatry Association, sexually assaulted four of his female patients during drug-induced sleep ... Although only ten percent of psychiatrists admit to sexually abusing patients, interestingly, 65 percent say new patients tell them of being abused sexually by their former psychiatrist." ["That vast apparative of putative concern, psychiatry, is largely a Jewish monopoly." -- Kahn, Roger. The Passionate People, William Morris, Inc., 1968, p. 53 / "All over the world, Jews are drawn to the profession of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic therapy. The 1990 roster of the International Psychoanalytical Association reads like the membership list of a synagogue." -- Earl Hopper, Psychotherapy and the 'Jewish Experience.' European Judaism, Spring 1996, p. 17-25]  

Arrest of Ex-Employee Sparks Concern. compcocity.com [originally from Edmonton Jewish Life], [Undated, 1990s]
"A former employee of Calgary Jewish Community Council has been charged with possession of child pornography, sexual assault and sexual interference with a child under 14 years of age. David Webber, 35, was arrested on February 22. On that date, police executed a search warrant on his apartment. In the search, they seized a large number of Polaroid photographs of nude boys aged 10 to 14 and written materials. Several children have already been interviewed and are alleged to be victims of sexual assault ... Before moving to Calgary, Webber was youth director of the Beth Israel Synagogue in Edmonton. In 1990, he was charged with sexual assault in Edmonton, but the charges were subsequently dismissed."

Sex Scandal Shakes Ground Under Barak's Government.
The Independent [Great Britain], March 8, 2000
"First corruption allegations, then a defeat in parliament and now a sex scandal. The ground under Ehud Barak, Israel's Prime Minister, seems to be slipping by the day. The latest blow came yesterday, when the Transport Minister, Yitzhak Mordechai, who deputises for Mr Barak in his absence, suspended himself pending an investigation into accusations that he sexually assaulted a female civil servant."

Leading Journalist Arrested on Sex Charge.
Haaretz, [Israeli newspaper], August 15, 2001
"The director-general of the Israel Journalists' Union, Tuvya Sa'ar, has been arrested on suspicion of having intercourse with a minor and coercing her for sexual favors. Sa'ar, 65, a resident of Tel Aviv, was detained two days ago and remanded in custody yesterday ... The charges allege Sa'ar got to know the minor two years through an Internet chat room and they began meeting at his home and in hotel rooms in Tel Aviv and Be'er Sheva. Although she was 15 years old at the time - a year below the age of consent - Sa'ar is suspected of having had intercourse with the minor and of using his position as a public figure to cajole and coerce her ... Sa'ar was previously director of Israel TV."

Selling Sex in Israel. Jewsweek, July 18, 2001
"This disturbing story unfolds all too often at the hotline for Migrant Workers, a Tel Aviv agency founded in 1998 to protect the human rights of foreign workers, victims of sex trafficking among them ... Director and co-founder Sigal Rozen, along with the group’s counsel, Nomi Levenkron, were in Washington, D.C. ... In an interview, Rozen called sex trafficking an 'unorganized crime,' based largely on personal networks of immigrants from the Ukraine, Russia, and Moldova. ... Those three countries alone accounted for 91 percent of the 474 women arrested in brothels and deported from Israel in 2000, according to figures compiled by hotline volunteers during visits to the Neveh Tirzah women’s prison. These statistics represent only a fraction of the problem. Police spokespersons have set the number of women brought into the country to work in the sex industry at 2,000-3,000 annually, the number of brothels at 250, Rozen said."

Human Rights Abuses Affecting Trafficked Women in Israel's Sex Industry.
Amnesty International, May 18, 2000 [MDE 15/017/2000]
"Although official statistics are not available, it is widely believed that in the past few years thousands of women, including some girls, from FSU countries have been trafficked to Israel to work in the sex industry. Under Israeli laws, virtually all these women are illegal aliens. They are in Israel without work permits or with false documents, which makes them particularly vulnerable to human rights abuses at the hands of traffickers, pimps and others involved in Israel's sex industry. Amnesty International has received many reports of trafficked women being subjected to various human rights abuses, such as enslavement and other restrictions on their liberty, as well as torture, including rape and other forms of sexual abuse ... Amnesty International has received information indicating that in many instances women trafficked from FSU countries are literally bought and sold for large sums of money, often in auctions where they are purchased by the highest bidder. Some are held in debt bondage where they are forced to work to pay off large sums of money. Some women are kidnapped against their will in FSU countires or are lured to Israel under false pretences, and brought to work in the sex industry. Their 'owners' restrict their movements in order to prevent them from leaving. There are many reports of women being imprisoned by their 'owners' in locked houses and apartments and prevented from going out unaccompanied."

Prostitution in the Land of the Maccabees: Trafficking in Women in Israel.
Social Action, [socialaction.com], "a Jewish Online Magazine."
"Today, the prostitute in Tel Aviv is more likely to be named Olga than Rachel, and she's not an Israeli, or in Israel legally. She's one of the more than 2,000 to 2,500 women from former Soviet republics brought into Israel by international traffickers to feed a $450 million-a-year prostitution industry centered around Tel Aviv. The money paid for her body goes to the man she's been sold to. Assault and rape are common ways of keeping 'employees' in line in this business, and the only way a woman will leave Israel's sex industry is if she comes to the attention of the Israeli authorities who will deport her, penniless and traumatized, back to Eastern Europe ... Very rarely, a particularly horrific story will make its way from the Israeli press to American Jewish listserves. When the most recent of these motivated me to get out there and see what I could do to help, I discovered that there is apparently no Jewish organization in the United States or Canada working to raise awareness of trafficking issues in Israel, or bring American Jewish money and influence to bear on the situation. Why should this be an issue for the American Jewish community? After all, most of the women affected are not Jewish."

Factbook on Global Sex Exploitation: Israel. Coalition Against Trafficking in Women
"Traffickers and pimps earned US$50,000 - 100,000 a year from each prostituted woman, resulting in a US$450 million sex industry. ('A modern form of slavery,' The Jerusalem Post, 13 January 1998)
1,500 Russian and Ukrainian trafficked women have been deported from 1995-1997. (Michael Specter, 'Traffickers’ New Cargo: Naive Slavic Women,' New York Times, 11 January 1998)
Russian women are bought and sold by pimps in Israel for prices ranging from US$5,000 to $20,000. (Police sources, ''Invisible' Women Shown In Russia's Demographics,' Martina Vandenberg, St. Petersburg Times, 13 October 1997)
A small brothel with ten women can make up to 750,000 shekels a month (US $215,000). (Michael Specter, 'Traffickers’ New Cargo: Naive Slavic Women," New York Times, 11 January 1998)
Women trafficked from Eastern Europe, were stripped and sold naked as slaves to Tel Aviv traders for US$500-1,000.
Smuggling, fraudulent documents, collaboration between police and brothel owners are involved. There are routine brutal beatings and sexual abuse. (New York Times 11 January 1998)."

BGU Publishes First Study of local Prostitutes. Jerusalem Post, July 31, 2001
"A first-ever Israeli academic study on the medical and emotional condition of prostitutes has found that most risk HIV and hepatitis C infection through unprotected oral sex, and many suffer from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder ... They reported in private interviews of having an average of 12 clients a day during the week, and during peak days (weekends and holidays) about 30 in a 24-hour period. Two-fifths worked daily except for a single day off a month. They earned a monthly average of only $1,285, and those with family abroad sent most of it to support them, while their personal expenses were paid by the brothel owners."

Brazilian Jewry -- A Concise History. JewishGen: The Home of Jewish Genealogy.
"We now come of a very sordid period in Jewish history. Late in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Jews controlled the trade in white slavery, which is a polite way of saying prostitution. And they did so worldwide. Reputable historians claim Jews ran brothels in Shanghai, India, Turkey, Argentina, Brazil and New York City ... One unfortunate result of Jewish-controlled white slavery was that anti-semites in Europe used the information to paint all Jews as unworthy, as criminals, and deserving of expulsion from their country. Fortunately, Jewish communities that had been initially timid in dealing with this issue eventually rallied and worked throughout the world to stamp out this blemish, finally succeeding. So much so that today many Jews have not heard of this shameful episode in Jewish history."

Porn Figure Sturman Dies. Las Vegas Review-Journal, October 29, 1997
"[Jewish] Pornography czar Reuben Sturman, who was the focus of a high-profile 1992 obscenity case in Las Vegas, died Monday at a federal prison in Kentucky, where he was serving terms for tax fraud in Cleveland and extortion in Chicago ... During his first trial in Las Vegas on obscenity and racketeering charges that ended in a mistrial in October 1991, news accounts described a jovial Sturman who laughed as jurors watched films of men and women having sex with animals ... In the 1980s, Sturman was identified by the Justice Department as the No. 1 distributor of hard-core pornography."

Criminal Enterprises: Pornography.
Department of Criminal Justice and Police Studies, Eastern Kentucky University.
"Of the individuals indicted by the federal government in the MIPORN [Miami Pornography] operation, [Jewish porn mogul] Reuben Sturman was clearly the most important. Sturman presided over his business enterprises from his Sovereign News Company, headquartered in Cleveland. Sovereign News was housed in a three-story, red-brick building, surrounded by chain-link fences and barbed wire and protected by the most modern and sophisticated electronic surveillance devices money can buy (Potter, 1986; Satchell, 1979). Sturman controlled pornography distribution warehouses in Baltimore, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Denver, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Toronto, Los Angeles, and Detroit. In addition, he was the principle owner of between 300 and 800 retail pornography stores around the country (May and Hosenball, 1981). Sturman's Sovereign News Empire dominated the pornography industry and created an environment in which smaller operators and their distributors were dependent upon Sovereign News for their survival. A confidential FBI memorandum on the pornography industry said that [Sturman's business practices] have included the strong-arm shakedowns of other dealers, distributors, and suppliers throughout the United States, particularly on the West Coast."

Ron Jeremy: Porn Buddha. Austin Arts Downtown, May-June 2001
"People call Jeremy addicted (to food), a tightwad, a clown, a spotlight hound and a man who can maintain an erection longer than any man in pornography. He claims not to use Viagra®. He was born Ron Hyatt into a Jewish family who don't seem too put off by his ultimate career choice, although after the first porn film, his dad told Ron not to use his last name ... We are talking about a man who can count a film called Blow it Out Your Ass, as a typical title among the 1600 or so films he has appeared in."

Rebel without Clothes. New Haven Advocate.
"To many people, Nina Hartley would appear to be the embodiment of contradiction: a feminist who's also a veteran porn star and damn proud of it. Further confounding stereotypes, she's a public speaker as comfortable in a college lecture hall as on a strip club stage and a politically aware progressive -- a 'third-generation socialist,' she called herself in a wide-ranging 1989 interview in Shmate, a now-defunct progressive Jewish journal. She's a 1985 graduate of San Francisco State University with a B.S. in nursing. Magna cum laude, at that. She entered the sex business in 1982, working as a stripper at a San Francisco club while she was in college. Hartley, who estimates she has appeared in 360 movies or videos, made her first film in 1984 ... Hartley's emergence as one of porn's top stars coincided with a burgeoning public debate over the medium ... The opinionated and articulate Hartley entered the fray and has become the foremost spokesperson for women working in the porn industry.

Dr. Block's Little House of Sexual Horrors. Salon.com, February 18, 1999
"There must be an explanation for the scene taking place just five feet away. A blond, large-breasted woman and a massive black man are fornicating with methodical, casual self-consciousness, like two body-builders pumping iron after an injury. He is on top, banging away unhurriedly, holding himself away from her with two knuckled fists planted on either side of her hips. She doesn't touch him but fidgets with a silver vibrator while preening at the small live audience and the roving, carnivorous camera. The peanut gallery continues with its kibitzing, trying to make sense of how such an explicitly sexual spectacle -- the climax to an evening of broken taboos -- can be so deeply, utterly unsexy. The event seemed too good to pass up. Dr. Susan Block, a [Jewish] sex celebrity who is, among other items on a groaning résumé, an advice columnist, a maker of videos bearing such titles as 'The Fine Art of Fellatio,' the author of 'The 10 Commandments of Pleasure,' the holder of a doctorate in philosophy, a radio and cable access talk-show host and the cleavage-friendly poster child for all things sex-enlightening and self-promoting, was throwing a Valentine's Day party to celebrate the opening of her new sexual institute, located in an old 1920s speakeasy in the heart of downtown L.A.'s art, fashion, financial and convention district ... Max, Susan Block's self-declared publicist, footman, butler, husband and sex slave, offers to show me the art ... 'We've got everything,' he says proudly, then segues into interview mode. 'I'm the most prosecuted publisher in America. I've been prosecuted 20 times and I've spent 18 months in jail.' He ticks off the charges on his fingers. 'Industrial espionage, rack ordinances (I put the first pair of tits on the streets of L.A.), conspiracy to publish.'" Block's online sex shop and altar to hedonistic self-indulgence is The Dr. Susan Block Institute for the Erotic Arts and Sciences.

Towering Men and Stout-Hearted Sisters. Jerusalem Post, March 9, 2000
[Book review of Jewish scholar Jay Gertzman's Bookleggers an Smuthounds]
"A great many of the publishers and peddlers of what was variously called flagitious, pornographic, or erotic literature were Jews, and most of those were German Jews who had learned the printing trades in the old country. This fact of course fed right into the animosity of anti-smut crusaders who constantly decried the 'foreign, radical, corrupting' character of the smut peddlers. The main protagonists in this battle for the soul, if not the groin, of America were the patrician John Saxton Sumner of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, and Samuel Roth, a writer, poet and genuine man of letters and an equally authentic purveyor of sleaze. Roth, for example, not only published (and often pirated) works by Lawrence, Joyce, Miller and legitimate classics, but also printed and peddled flip books, pornographic playing cards, albums of 'French postcards' and the vulgarities known as 'Tijuana Bibles.' Just to compound matters, during his various stints in prison Roth wrote works like Jews Must Live, a book of rabid anti-Jewish sentiment that Gertzman says still circulates in antisemitic circles today ... Gertzman himself acknowledges towards the end of his book that his uncle once ran the most notorious 'dirty bookshop' in Philadelphia. For that matter, Sam Roth's grandson is none other than Prof. James Kugel, the eminent Bible scholar at Harvard University. If there's a more complicated and surprising tribe on earth, I've yet to hear about it."

Porners Must Live. San Francisco Bay Guardian, October 25, 2000
"The story of the Web's most influential pornophile is nearly unbelievable: the son of an Australian Christian evangelist, Ford converted to Orthodox Judaism in 1993 – a 'porn-again Jew' in Fordspeak – under the theological influence of right-wing Jewish talk-radio demagogue Dennis Prager (whose Web site Ford also runs). As a result, Ford's site is not really a porn site at all. It's a daily chronicle of how devout Judaism and devout pornology play themselves out in one man's endless public arguments with himself. The basic premise: how can someone devote his professional life to an industry he believes is, in Ford's own words, 'profoundly destructive and hence immoral ... another form of rebellion against God.' Ford is a religious Jew, not a cultural one, yet it is cultural Jews – 'non-Jewish Jews,' he calls them – with whom Ford's site is most invested, specifically all those non-Jewish Jews who get it on and buy and sell the getting-it-on in the porn industry. Like all of his polemics, Ford's essay on these Jews is a rambling collage of theories, interviews, and uncited historical references that never really coalesce into an identifiable argument. Ford is less of an opinion maker and more of an archivist-chronicler, his agenda always buried beneath layers of deferral and ambiguity. In the piece, Ford turns the Jews-run-Hollywood riff into a Jews-run-porn riff, listing off the secret Hebraic roots of all the key players – Randy 'Andy Abrams' West, Barbara 'Stacy Mitnick' Dare. He also feeds the age-old anti-Semitic connection that Hitler turned into grounds for genocide in Mein Kampf – Jews as dirty, parasitic merchants of smut, disease, and moral pollution – by emphasizing the high number of Jewish porn publishers throughout smut's history."