Israeli police have been trying over the past three years to lay their hands on recordings of Rabbi Eliezer Berland’s alleged confessions of rape. On Tuesday night, Israel TV played those recordings, which will play a major role in convicting Berland, who has evaded Israeli police around the globe for three years, of four counts of rape and one count of an attack against the husband of one of the women who had launched a complaint against him.
The recordings were made four years ago by two of Berland’s followers, who were ordered at the time to burn all the incriminating material, because “you don’t cooperate with police.” But despite the order, someone has kept MP3 recordings of Berland describing one act of rape against one complainer.
Berland’s discussion is “purely” halakhic, concerning whether or not the raped woman is obligated to divorce her husband on the grounds of her adultery. “She was absolutely raped, beginning to end,” Berland is heard saying, meaning that the sexual liaison was not her responsibility and therefore she is not obligated to seek a divorce. “She is permitted to her husband without any doubt,” Berland said. “She had no understanding of what was going on, she has no need for any get-religious divorce.”
Berland further explained that what the woman had performed with him was a divine mission to serve in the role of his wife, and so she cannot be accused of doing it out of her own free will.
A different recording that has surfaced, this one a video, is even more disturbing than the view of a religious Jewish cult leader expecting the wives of his followers to satisfy his sexual needs as a divine assignment. The video show Berland sitting, wrapped in a talit, at a Melaveh Malka-Saturday night meal, with his followers, discussing the planting of an explosive charge to murder a former follower who reported on Berland to the police.
The discussion between Berland and a member of his cult of recruiting an expert in planting explosives from among their members (his name happens to be Nachman, which should cause a certain Hassidic teacher to roll in his grave many times over), and to send that moser-snitch “straight to Gan Eden.”
Viewing this plotting session of a murder, one is reminded of similar scenes involving mobsters and Hamas terrorists, except the godfather is in a talit and the gangsters wear shtreimlach.
