Sometimes when I dig up the cases of jews engaging in behaviour that would put Jeffrey Epstein and Joel Rifkin to shame; I find that the media has actually done a fairly good job of recounting the facts of the case for me so I can by enlarge let them speak for themselves.
This is the case with the ‘Times of Israel’ article on the life and crimes of Rabbi Moshe Yazdi in Jerusalem when they were exposed in the spring of 2022.
We read that:
‘An indictment was filed Monday against a Jerusalem rabbi for rape, sodomy and indecent assault by fraud of seven women whose consent for the acts he obtained by allegedly assuring them he was cleansing them of past sins.
Rabbi Moshe Yazdi, 59, has been under arrest since April 27. He is also accused of defrauding the victims of hundreds of thousands of shekels.
Yazdi was indicted of rape through fraud, sodomy through fraud, indecent acts through fraud, causing rape and indecent acts through fraud, fraudulently receiving items, and money laundering. Prosecutors asked that he be held until the end of the proceedings against him.
According to the indictment, Yazdi served since the 1990s as a rabbi in the Amudei Hashalom community in the capital’s Bukharim neighborhood. He also headed the community’s nonprofit organization.
During daily lessons to his followers, some of whom were newly religious, Yazdi urged giving up intellectual thought or personal feelings and instead submitting to a mindset directed by values and principles laid out in the Torah, prosecutors said.
He also claimed to be one of the 36 righteous people whose merits, according to some Jewish traditions, ensure the continued existence of the world, and stressed to his followers the need for their absolute obedience to his orders. He also falsely claimed to consult with the Divine Presence, deceased rabbis and others when giving personal advice to any of his followers, the indictment alleged.
Yazdi convinced the alleged victims that sins they committed had left “sparks of impurity” inside them that could only be purified through sex acts with him, prosecutors said. He also told each of the women they had special souls and impressed upon them that they must not tell anyone else what had happened between them.
The hundreds of thousands of shekels he asked them to give him were deposited in various bank accounts in the names of other people in an effort to hide the transactions, prosecutors said.
An indictment was filed Monday against a Jerusalem rabbi for rape, sodomy and indecent assault by fraud of seven women whose consent for the acts he obtained by allegedly assuring them he was cleansing them of past sins.
Rabbi Moshe Yazdi, 59, has been under arrest since April 27. He is also accused of defrauding the victims of hundreds of thousands of shekels.
Yazdi was indicted of rape through fraud, sodomy through fraud, indecent acts through fraud, causing rape and indecent acts through fraud, fraudulently receiving items, and money laundering. Prosecutors asked that he be held until the end of the proceedings against him.
According to the indictment, Yazdi served since the 1990s as a rabbi in the Amudei Hashalom community in the capital’s Bukharim neighborhood. He also headed the community’s nonprofit organization.
During daily lessons to his followers, some of whom were newly religious, Yazdi urged giving up intellectual thought or personal feelings and instead submitting to a mindset directed by values and principles laid out in the Torah, prosecutors said.
He also claimed to be one of the 36 righteous people whose merits, according to some Jewish traditions, ensure the continued existence of the world, and stressed to his followers the need for their absolute obedience to his orders. He also falsely claimed to consult with the Divine Presence, deceased rabbis and others when giving personal advice to any of his followers, the indictment alleged.
Yazdi convinced the alleged victims that sins they committed had left “sparks of impurity” inside them that could only be purified through sex acts with him, prosecutors said. He also told each of the women they had special souls and impressed upon them that they must not tell anyone else what had happened between them.
The hundreds of thousands of shekels he asked them to give him were deposited in various bank accounts in the names of other people in an effort to hide the transactions, prosecutors said.
Police have said that in some cases Yazdi assaulted women on the day of their weddings.
Some of the alleged crimes were committed well over a decade ago, with the most recent being a year and a half ago, police said.
Haaretz reported two weeks ago that as early as 2004 a rabbinic court had banned Yazdi from teaching, meeting with, or advising women after it had heard of complaints against him; however, the alleged assaults continued. A first complaint was filed with police against him in 2007, the report said, without specifying the outcome. Then in 2016, Yazdi was convicted under a plea bargain of misdemeanor charges after he tried to exit the country despite a bailiff order against him leaving. At the time he was given a fine and a suspended sentence.’ (1)
Now such cases like this are not uncommon in the jewish community and another such example is that leading Hasidic Rabbi and ersatz Israeli organized crime leader Rabbi Eliezer Berland. (2) The difference between Berland and Yazdi is that Yazdi is not quite so far along in his career of fraud, rape and white-collar crime yet and hasn’t yet graduated to Berland’s alleged – but strongly believed to be the case by Israeli police – proclivity for ordering his followers to conduct mob-style assassinations of his enemies and critics. (3)
However, we can add some extra detail to the ‘Times of Israel’s’ run-down of Yazdi’s crimes as ‘Haaretz’ goes a bit further and points out that Yazdi deliberately targeted ‘newly religious’ women (4) while the ‘Times of Israel’ is more cautious and doesn’t go quite that far but implies as much. (5)
Further it is worth pointing out – which the ‘Times of Israel’ doesn’t mention – that Yazdi was also arrested all the way back in 2006 - the year before the first complaint of him manipulating female ‘newly religious’ jewesses and then repeatedly raping them - for having some cannabis on him that he’d also allegedly acquired from a ‘student who had become religious’ – notice the pattern? – and seems to have scooted out of the charges somehow by claiming that he had ‘just forgotten to throw it away’. (6) It is also worth noting that in the same ‘YNet’ article on this arrest that Yazdi is said to work with ‘vulnerable populations’ – abuse victims, addicts and so on – (7) which shows exactly the kind of evil exploitive creature Yazdi was and by all accounts still is.
In addition, it is worth pointing that Yazdi was – and is – the founder and leader of the Amudei Hashalom (‘Pillars of Peace’) organization, which basically ‘feeds/helps needy jews’ in Jerusalem and has spread around the world (including to Los Angeles) (8) that he funds by panhandling to Diaspora jews as well as non-jews (as I remember they used to advertise a fair amount targeting non-jews for fundraising along the lines of ‘help feed a needy Holocaust Survivor’). (9)
So basically, while Rabbi Yazdi was going around fundraising and ‘advocating for’ poor and needy jews in Israel and abroad (one wonders how there are any but apparently there are): he was privately manipulating them so he could repeatedly rape them and steal whatever money they possessed.
What a lovely but oh so typically jewish individual!
References
(1) https://www.timesofisrael.com/rabbi-charged-with-raping-followers-claiming-it-would-cleanse-their-sins/
(2) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/rabbi-eliezer-berland-jewish-fraudster
(3) Idem.
(4) https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2022-05-26/ty-article/.premium/rabbi-to-be-charged-with-rape-allegedly-targeted-newly-religious-women-for-years/00000180-fe99-d1e6-afbb-fff92e200000
(5) https://www.timesofisrael.com/rabbi-charged-with-raping-followers-claiming-it-would-cleanse-their-sins/
(6) https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/1,7340,L-3198914,00.html
(7) Ibid.
(8) https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-708652; https://jewishhomela.wordpress.com/2013/10/07/77
(9) For example: https://www.guidestar.org/profile/27-0533822