For you to have gone that path took a lot of commitment,
a lot of sacrifice, a lot of effort,
a lot of spiritual energy,
and you have wound up being alienated
from that community to the point that
like a hundred rabbis,
many of them in positions of great leadership
within the faith, have essentially banished you
and said that you should never teach,
never hold a position in any way so
you have come to be alienated
from that which you had invested greatly at some point.
Then I know that you moved to,
I don't know that the right word is a new age mind-set
and now leaders that have been known in that community
have come forth and said,
"I don't wanna have anything to do
"with this guy, don't want him associated with me
"in any way, don't want him teaching,
"don't want him being, him to do here."
you have managed to become alienated,
at odds with a substantial number of people
in two areas that you have invested a lot of your life in.
Right.
And I'm just curious what your ownership is?
Most of the rabbis on the list, I don't know.
Of those that I do know,
I haven't been in touch with for 10 to 12 years.
Most of the new age teachers I don't know
and have nothing to do with and I've never met,
and, so, most of this, and this is what I tried
to say in the beginning,
most of this is a kind of tragedy of the web.
We're not sitting, we're not talking to each other,
we're not having face-to-face conversation.
Facts are completely distorted,
and, so, we're locked in a kind of web war.
Now, you know, if a person's raped, you know
we can say to them, you know, "Wow, were you responsible?"
Right, I feel like I've been name raped.
I want to take responsibility for every individual thing
that I've done wrong.
That's my full commitment.
Why do you think these people have come after you
with such a vengeance?
Seemed like they'd have a lot of stuff
in their own life to do.
What do you think's really behind this?
I think I'm offering the best thing
I can offer into the world, you know,
and I can't, I can't fully conjecture
at other people's motives.
You said at one point you thought they were jealous.
Which is certainly a common motive.
You know, there's two kinds of jealousy.
There's jealousy which is kind of a casual jealousy,
and there's jealousy which is a more primal jealousy,
kinda Salieri and Mozart.
It's a more primal jealousy.
Salieri wants to bring down Mozart at all costs.
I've experienced that kind of jealousy for all of my life,
and that's been a piece of it.
Scapegoating could be a piece of it.
My own responsibility and shadow could be a piece of it.
Right, false complaints is a piece of it.
A smear campaign's a piece of it.
It's multidetermined, it's not a sound bite.
Yeah, well, I'm not askin' for a sound bite.
I'm askin' what you think.
I think it's all of those.
So, if people want the facts,
you acknowledge you had inappropriate relationships
with two underage girls, 30 and one in 36 years ago.
You did have complaints arising from three women
in Israel 10 years ago.
You have been denounced by the Jewish leadership
and some in the new age, I guess, for lack of a better,
it's kind of a catchall phrase, I know,
leadership.
Most of those denouncers and the 3,000 plus people
on the petition saying you should never be able
to occupy the clergy or a teaching position,
most of those people signing, you don't even know.
That's correct.
Most of those people I don't know.
There are a few people that ya do know who take umbrage
to things that they feel like they know
which maybe, some of it's accurate,
some of it is distorted,
some of it is made up out of whole cloth.
That's correct.
And if somebody wants to decide that you're not okay,
based on the things you acknowledge
which are the two underage relationships,
the three women that took umbrage with you
10 years ago in Israel.
If they wanta decide you're a bad egg based on that,
then they can decide that.
But if they wanta distort things beyond all a that,
then that gets into a smear campaign.
That's right.