Reply To: Confronting the Past

First off, I actually did mail the letter out.

It’s been asked what I want to accomplish. One of the things I wrote in the letter was that I had no idea how many other students this Rebbe hurt. Only Hashem knows the answer to that. I wanted to let the Rebbe know exactly what he did for a few reasons. First of all, I do want to help other students of his. Second, I’d like to be able to forgive him. I haven’t yet been able to. I hope that his reading this letter will cause him to show some remorse. If he does, I think I’ll finally be able to forgive him for it.

BP Totty: your line about connections is unfortunately very true. When I was in elementary school, a kid in my class had a father who was a Rebbe in the yeshiva’s high school. He didn’t like me very much, and once made up a story to get me in trouble. He claimed I did something to him which I didn’t. He even got some friends to back him up. I denied it, and the rebbe called me a liar and sent me to the kindergarten until I’d tell the truth. After a few days, one of the kids who backed him up went to the Rebbe and told him what had really happened, and I was allowed back into class. No apology from the Rebbe, and the boy who made up the story got nothing. In front of the whole class (as it had been when I was first punished), I told the Rebbe that I was publicly humiliated because this boy lied, and now nothing was happening to him. I said, “If my father was a Rebbe in the yeshiva, nothing would have happened to me at all. It’s only because his father is a Rebbe here that he’s getting away free.”

I got punished again for my chutzpah.