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Netanel Zellis-Paley Profile picture
Netanel Zellis-Paley
@wordpaley
“Would that all Y-H-V-H’s people were prophets” (Num. 11:29). PhD student (@NetanelPaley), organizer, self-explorer, non-rabbi. Talked Talmud @interleaved_pod.
Apr 1 • 20 tweets • 4 min read
What is this book, and why have Bnei Avraham, a group of religious Jews and one of the oldest Israeli-Palestinian solidarity groups in Hebron, been handing out copies of it to IDF soldiers in Gaza?

Thread: Image Bnei Avraham was founded in the early 2000s by a group of religious Jews in an attempt to build relationships with Palestinians in Hebron following decades of violence between Jews and Muslims, punctuated by Muslims' 1929 massacre and Baruch Goldstein's 1994 massacre.
Oct 19, 2023 • 11 tweets • 5 min read
Starting a thread of Jewish activists wearing taleisim at demonstrations representing decidedly Jewish causes. Feel free to add more! R’ Avi Weiss speaking following a protest for Soviet Jewry on Dec. 6, 1987 (Don’t think I need a source to prove this is a Jewish cause) Image
May 5, 2023 • 16 tweets • 4 min read
devastated by the loss of Herschel Siegel z”l.

when rabbis and community leaders insist that being frum and queer necessarily must be a “struggle”, they are saying there will necessarily be people who will not survive the struggle.

if there is no change, there will be more. i only had the privilege of briefly meeting Herschel once and watching him perform in a YCDS show. even just from that i could tell he was full of life and brimming with positivity. he had a smile that could light up a room.

frum jews: your rhetoric could be lethal to ANYONE.
Aug 16, 2022 • 59 tweets • 17 min read
In June, I wrote about @CampKaylie, an Orthodox summer camp that kept an alleged child sex abuser on staff and only removed him after public pressure. People were shocked.

The truth is that Kaylie's parent organization, @OHELFamily, has done this sort of thing for decades.

1/56 First, a disclaimer and a word of appreciation: OHEL's alleged history of covering up and ignoring the sexual abuse of children and individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities under their care is too vast and complex to be covered in even an 100-tweet thread.
Jul 6, 2022 • 37 tweets • 15 min read
I don’t really like reading Jewish texts as portents of current events because I think it cheapens the meaning and depth of our present moment.

But after the horrors in Highland Park, there’s one Biblical story that is so stuck in my mind that I cannot ignore it.

🧵(1/36): Maybe you’ve heard of it before. It’s the story of Sodom, a city of people so cruel and evil that God destroyed it. Actually, God didn’t just destroy it; God flipped the entire city over and rained actual fire and brimstone on it.

The story begins here:
sefaria.org/Genesis.18.20
Jun 2, 2022 • 62 tweets • 11 min read
In the days since I posted this thread, I've gotten 2 main questions:

1. How is this abuse?
2. What about all the good he did?

I'd like to answer both by talking about spiritual abuse, and by sharing another powerful testimony that says it better than I ever could.

🧵(1/63): Before we understand spiritual abuse, we have to understand spirituality. Whether or not you believe in the concept of the soul or some other inner experience that transcends thought and emotion, spirituality is tightly intertwined with our intellectual and emotional lives.

2/63
May 29, 2022 • 42 tweets • 10 min read
CW: emotional abuse

This week (1 Sivan) marks the shloshim (30 days since burial) of Zechariah Wallerstein.

In the past month, many have presented him as a selfless Tzadik. Rabbis, Jewish media like @MeaningfulMin and @themishpacha.

Now it’s time to hear the truth.

🧵(1/41): Before I begin, I want to apologize to the victims, survivors, and people who have experienced abuse by Wallerstein whose stories I will be sharing here. I meant to post this thread shortly after his death, and though life prevented me from doing so, it wasn’t fair to you.

2/41
Apr 7, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
The thing about this take is while it’s technically accurate, Rambam himself has to account for all the times the Sages said this about a huge variety of behaviors, from calling someone a nickname they don’t like to saying an interpretation of Torah your rabbi doesn’t like. Image He tries, but the unintended effect is to minimize the severity of all the categories of heresy he just listed: “Oh yeah also the rabbis said this about a bunch of other stuff so you should be careful about that stuff too.” It’s just not that convincing.

sefaria.org/Mishneh_Torah,…
Apr 7, 2022 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
All the Torah content and learning skills that an Orthodox Jew needs to be a spiritually healthy, independent-thinking religious person can be taught by motivated parents with a good yeshiva education at night and on weekends. Orthodox Jewish day schools are a mere convenience. Think about all the time spent in the early grades of (most) yeshiva day schools just learning Chumash, Navi, and Mishnah by rote without learning essential textual skills and critical thinking. Certainly something is gained, but is it something that parents can’t do themselves?
Mar 31, 2022 • 19 tweets • 5 min read
Counterpoint: accepting the notion that God created entire groups of people who are fated to live their lives in sin is highly theologically problematic. There are a number of Rabbinic sources that either say explicitly or heavily imply that everyone is born with a clean slate or at least with the potential to become a nearly-perfect righteous person on the level of Moshe Rabbeinu (Moses).
Mar 27, 2022 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
Before people congratulate the RCBC, a few notes:

1. La Cucina di Nava’s contract was likely renewed in Dec 2021 or Jan 2022. RCBC was aware of allegations since Nov 2021 at the latest. In late Nov, they were given the opportunity to meet directly with a victim. They declined. 2. A senior member of the RCBC, a rabbi in the community of one of the victims, repeatedly tried to silence that victim’s relative from spreading the allegations. He heard testimony from another victim in 2020. A month later, he hosted Yehudiel’s food truck at his shul.
Mar 21, 2022 • 29 tweets • 10 min read
CW: sexual abuse

This is Yaakov Bleich. Since 1992, he's claimed to be chief rabbi of Ukraine. In 3 weeks, he's raised nearly $3 million for Jews in Ukraine and has appeared on CNN.

He's also alleged to have raped or sexually abused a number of girls and young women.

🧵1/29 First: who is Bleich, and how did he get to Ukraine?

Bleich comes from a "centrist" yeshivish family in the NY area. After an incident that damaged his reputation in the Telz high school in Chicago, Bleich began learning in a Stolin (chassidish) yeshiva in Israel.

2/29
Mar 3, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
I shared a thread on the war I thought was unbiased—after spending 10+ hours absorbing material from all sides (literally The American Conservative to Jacobin)—from an independent academic and was accused of sharing Russian propaganda. I think this should give some folks pause. I deleted my quote tweet of the thread because there were inaccuracies in it I was unaware of. I no longer believe it to be unbiased. I also don’t appreciate people talking down to me as if I haven’t done my own research on the topic or I’m a naive Russia sympathizer.
Jan 9, 2022 • 29 tweets • 10 min read
CW: child sexual abuse

Gut voch. Last week, I tweeted a thread about Aaron Teitelbaum, owner of a popular music production company in the NY area. I deleted the thread the next day. Why? Because one of his enablers tried to scare me.

I’m here to tell you I’m not scared anymore. Why am I not scared? Because that recording is out there. Because people have known about his alleged abuse for more than 20 years. Because any threat he or his enablers make against me will bring everything he’s done into the light. And because I am not alone.
Jan 6, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
CW: Detailed account of sexual assault

I didn’t think it was possible for @YUNews to look worse in this story, but here we are. If you listen to this and still doubt whether a) an assault happened or b) whether YU handled this properly, I’m sorry but you’re in denial. Some new details that the brave young woman shared:

-It was a 1st date
-She was adamant not to go up to her alleged abuser’s apartment and insisted on being near other people
-He duped her into going up under the pretense of helping him with something
-He held her down violently
Jan 4, 2022 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
When you mock, deny the need for, and celebrate the “failure” of efforts to publicize the sexual abuse of children—in the name of your Orthodox way of life—you’re saying your way of life doesn’t hold children’s safety and well-being paramount. That’s not something to be proud of. These guys know better. They know many, if not most, people in their communities don’t have social media. Some don’t even have smartphones, computers. How are they going to find out about Chaim Walder? How are they going to know how to protect their children from people like him?
Jan 3, 2022 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
Read this thread until the end.
The texts that must be grappled with are everywhere, even where you don’t think to look. Just in yesterday’s daf, the Talmud says we can’t rely on testimony of a person who experienced something as a child. Would the Sages believe Walder’s victims? sefaria.org/Megillah.20a.4
Jan 2, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
To all my non-religious/non-Jewish followers confused/disturbed why I’m tweeting so much about sexual abuse:

Thank you for staying with me until now. My community is undergoing a major reckoning and it’s difficult to think, and certainly tweet, about other things right now. 1/3 I’m also in a PhD program, which limits the amount of time I can spend here. So for the next few weeks most, if not all of my tweets, will be about this issue. I promise you, I wish I didn’t have to tweet so much about this. But I cannot remain silent given the platform I have. 2
Jan 1, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Shavua tov. If your rabbi didn’t talk about believing and supporting victims of sexual abuse (either in a speech, email, or even a note in the newsletter), it might be time to find a new rabbi. Even better, it might be time to rethink your relationship with rabbis. As Asher says perfectly here, there’s nothing that rabbis learn in their training that makes them remotely qualified to handle sexual abuse. Even @YUNews’ rabbinical school, a “Modern Orthodox” institution, offers no formal training to their students.
Dec 28, 2021 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
I’ll do a longer thread at some point but for now I’ll just say this: the rabbinic establishment’s response to the Walder case, while horrific, is nothing new. It’s part of a long rabbinic tradition of disregard for the subjective experience of women. Dating back to the Mishnah. I’m aware of halachic innovations in the areas of abortion, contraception, irregular menstruation, and to a far lesser extent, agunah. These are all good things.

That doesn’t detract from the fact that the mainstream tradition still pervades most other areas of Orthodox halacha.
Nov 24, 2021 • 27 tweets • 6 min read
Gentle reminder that the Baruch Lanner scandal was widely considered a watershed moment and yet Orthodox institutions continue to look the other way on child sex abuse. There will be no real watershed moment until there is trauma-informed Halacha mandating us to believe victims. Chaim Walder had dozens of victims. Baruch Lanner might have had more. You know why the community acted? Because victims don’t get together to make this stuff up. It’s a numbers game.