Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Fugitive Hasidic Rabbi Admits Raping Follower in Secret Tape

JERUSALEM — A rabbi who was extradited back to Israel from South Africa to face sex abuse charges is heard admitting to raping one woman on a years-old recording.

The recording purported to be Rabbi Eliezer Berland was aired Tuesday night on Israel’s Channel 2. It reportedly has been turned over to the police.

Berland is accused of sexually assaulting several of his female followers; he has denied the allegations.

Among the recordings is a conversation between Berland, 79, and several of his followers in which he talks about “the first time I raped her” — her refers to one of his followers. On the recording, Berland explains that the woman was not obligated to divorce her husband with a Jewish divorce, or “get,” since she did not consent to the sex act.

“She had no idea what was happening, so there is no need for a get,” Berland told his listeners. “The rape had completely broken her, start to finish.” He also said that “she never did it out of her own free will.”

Berland’s attorney has denied in interviews with the Israeli media that the voice on the recording is Berland’s, saying his enemies are trying to hurt him.

The attorney for several of Berland’s victims has called for the rabbi not to be released to house arrest, as a court is now considering.

Berland, founder of the Shuvu Bonim religious seminary in Israel, fled to South Africa for a year before he was extradited to Israel earlier this month. He was arrested in April in Johannesburg.

Last summer, prior to his move to South Africa, he had fought his extradition from the Netherlands on the grounds that the alleged assaults happened in the West Bank and Israel does not have jurisdiction there.

Since the accusations in 2012, Berland had also hidden in Morocco and Zimbabwe.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.