Where is the Anger at Molesting?

by Rabbi Dovid E. Eidensohn

People are aroused and angry when a child or even an adult is molested. Of course, that is normal; people should be aroused and angry. The problem is, that people are aroused and angry only selectively. Our society and even within our community great suffering is visited upon children and even adults, but the vast majority of it passes un-remarked.

People are aroused and angry if a woman is pained in any way. But why are people not aroused and angry, and why are the women completely silent, when in the modern Orthodox world women must delay marriage so long, and men delay marriage so long, that inevitably, men use women the wrong way? Why are we silent at the Tephilin Dates? Is it not abuse when women must dishonor themselves?

Eichmann once said that people are aroused and angry when one person is killed. But when six million people are killed people shrug and go on with their lives. Emotions are not able to focus on such a large group. Thus, we in our community complain bitterly when one child is molested. But if an entire group of people suffer we are silent and are not angry. This is wrong.

Most children today enter marital age with no reliable parnoso. Is this not cruelty? Is this cruelty not only to the marrying children but to their children, and to the parents of the marrying couple who have to support their children with money needed for retirement and even living expenses?

There is great fury when a Yeshiva ostensibly had a rebbe who molested children, and there should be great fury for this. If a Yeshiva teaches children that if they work and don't learn they are failures, is this not molestation? And what of the Beis Yaacov that teach a girl that to marry a working boy is unacceptable? And then the girl seeks a good boy and is told that only rich girls are considered. Is this not a destruction? Where is the anger?