Robert Kraft, the billionaire owner of the Patriots and a major Jewish philanthropist, was charged on Friday in a prostitution sting in South Florida. Kraft, who is 77, was charged on two counts of soliciting prostitution along with 24 other people. Police say that incidents in which Kraft solicited prostitution were caught on hidden cameras.

Kraft was awarded the 2019 Genesis Prize this year, which recognizes Jews for extraordinary works, and gives winners $1 million to distribute to causes as they see fit. Kraft, who succeeds last year’s wildly contentious winner Natalie Portman , is still set to distribute the prize money to causes that will “combat anti-Semitism, efforts at de-legitimization of Israel,” according to the prize’s website .

Kraft is an openly observant Jew who has focused his philanthropy on Jewish causes, giving a reported half a billion dollars to charitable groups, with a focus on Jewish and Israeli organizations.

As the Kraft scandal unfolds, we feel moved to ask — does soliciting prostitution violate Jewish law?

As is often the case in Jewish law, the answer is: It’s complicated.

The Torah offers several examples of morally ambiguous or even heroic prostitutes — Tamar, who disguises herself as a prostitute and successfully solicits her deceased husband’s father for sex, so determined is she to have a child by that bloodline. Her father-in-law moves to have her burned to death for prostitution, until she reveals that she was the disguised prostitute he slept with. Not only is Tamar praised, Judah looks foolish. Later in the Torah, a non-Jewish prostitute, Rahab, shelters Israelite spies in her home, and in turn is saved when the Israelites ransack the city. The Torah draws one big line with prostitution, in Leviticus: “Do not degrade your daughter and make her a harlot, lest the land fall into harlotry and the land be filled with depravity.”

The Talmud also does not clearly condemn prostitution. Multiple times, Talmudic writers urge students to avoid physical proximity to prostitutes — founding Yiddish Forward editor Abe Kahan offered similar advice over one thousand years later. However, Dr. Judith Baskin writes that in the case of prostitution, the Talmud draws a halakhic line “between what is ethically preferred and what is legally permitted,” with prostitution falling into the second category. Visiting a prostitute, though frowned upon, and a possible opportunity for pitfalls like incest and ritual impurity, was not forbidden, though it was preferred that the prostitute was not a Jewish woman.

Two Talmudic texts that are frequently referenced in the Jewish debate about prostitution suggest that emphasis should be placed on optics, not actions.

“Better that a man secretly transgress and not publicly profane God’s name so that no one learns from his action,” according to Rabbi Hanina. “If a man sees that his [evil] inclination overwhelms him, he should go to a place where he is unknown, wear black clothing and cover himself with black, and do what his heart desires, so that he does not publicly profane God’s name,” argues Kiddushin 40A.

Modern interpretations of halakha generally take a much stricter view on prostitution. Sex outside of marriage is condemned, as is, by that same token, sex with a non-Jewish person. Rabbi Michael Gold explains that Orthodox Jews consider all sex outside of marriage as equivalent to prostitution. Sex for money is largely considered unethical by mainstream Jewish movements, though for years a minority group of progressive voices has advocated for legalizing prostitution and promoting the rights of all sex workers.

All mainstream Jewish movements generally reject prostitution, but ambiguity in the text and an understanding of the power of human desire makes space for people who have engaged in prostitution to return to their communities.

Interestingly, prostitution is legal in Israel. Simultaneously, Israel has a massive sex trafficking problem .

Perhaps a meaningful form of teshuva for Kraft would be giving to groups that work to battle human trafficking in the country he clearly loves so much? Just a thought.

Correction, February 23: An earlier edition of this article attributed a quote to Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg that was actually written by Dr. Judith Baskin. Rabbi Ruttenberg edited “The Passionate Torah,” the collection of essays from which the Baskin quote was sourced.

Jenny Singer is the deputy life/features editor for the Forward. You can reach her at Singer@forward.com or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny

In “A Star Is Born,” the third, and flashiest remake of “the story Hollywood can’t stop telling,” has enjoyed glowing attention.

Writers have profiled nearly everyone in the movie, from director-star Bradley Cooper, to Cooper’s real life ear doctor , who has a cameo in the film. Lady Gaga’s relentless repetition during the movie’s press tour gained so much attention that it was parodied at this year’s Golden Globe awards . Fans have dissected everything from the movie’s references to Judy Garland to the specific qualities that made Cooper’s dog, Charlie, perfect for his role.

So the silence around Rafi Gavron, an actor in the movie who in 2013 was reportedly arrested and charged with domestic assault after allegedly punching and threatening to kill his girlfriend, is especially loud.

The leading actors in the 2018 “A Star Is Born” were already so massively famous that it’s hard to say if any stars were born in the making of the movie. But burning quietly in the public conscience in the wake of the flashy film are the tawny, elfin features of Rafi Gavron, the British-Israeli actor who played Rez Gavron, an A&R executive who becomes a manager for Ally, played by Lady Gaga.

Gavron is a longtime working actor — the 29 year-old broke out in a 2009 Anthony Minghella movie and went on to roles in “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist,” “24,” and “Life Unexpected.” This year he’ll enjoy starring roles on “The Godfather of Harlem” alongside Forest Whitaker, and in “Catch-22” with George Clooney . During the casting, shooting, press junket, and award season for “A Star Is Born,” Gavron was reportedly serving a five year probationary period after pleading no-contest to domestic assault charges.

In late 2013, Gavron, then 24, was arrested twice in one night — first for driving while intoxicated, then later that night on charges of domestic violence. TMZ reported at the time that Gavron’s girlfriend told police that when she refused to give him money, he punched, slapped, kicked, and hit her, and threatened to kill her. When she escaped he took her car, at which point he was arrested on charges of drunk driving. The girlfriend was taken to the hospital with minor injuries, and later that night Gavron was arrested a second time, on charges of domestic violence.

In February of 2014, Gavron pleaded no contest to charges of domestic violence and joy riding, and began a five-year probationary period. At the time, the story was reported by TMZ, and picked up by outlets like the Huffington Post. But it’s difficult to find any other reports of Gavron’s arrest and sentencing. Mentions of the story do not appear on his Wikipedia, IMDB, or Rotten Tomatoes pages. Deadline articles that report on his casting do not reference the story. The Jewish Museum of London featured Gavron in their Jewish Lives Project , but left out this story.

Gavron’s pedigree is a line of historic Jewish and Zionist leaders long enough to warrant its own museum exhibition. His father was the noteworthy publisher Simon Gavron, and his mother is writer Martha Pichey. On the Gavron side he is no less than the grandson of a Lord . Lord Robert Gavron, a legendary publisher and philanthropist, was married to Hannah Fyvel, a celebrated feminist and academic.

Fyvel was the daughter of Tosco R. Fyvel, a visionary publisher. A friend of George Orwell’s, he is also remembered as Chaim Weizmann’s “greatest collaborator.” One of his early jobs was as Golda Meir’s assistant — he was compelled by Zionism through his mother, a member of the Lubavitcher-Schneerson dynasty and niece of Zionist thinker Ahad Haam, according to the “Palgrave Dictonary of Anglo-Jewish History.” she also worked for Weizmann. Fyvel’s father, likewise no slouch, was the executive director of Keren Hayesod, the historic Israeli fundraising agency. Their great-great grandson is Rafi Gavron. Finally, his aunt is Sarah Gavron, the director of “Suffragette.”

Gavron’s role in the movie is eye-catching — accessorized down to his socks in fantastic suits, he plays a glimmering, ageless Hollywood villain. It’s noteworthy that he shares his character’s last name, “Gavron,” which is not true of any other actor in the movie.

That fact makes it hard to imagine that no one involved in the making of the movie knew about Gavron’s past, or the fact that he was — and is — reportedly on probation. Lady Gaga is an outspoken activist against sexual assault. The movie was made at the height of the #metoo movement. Gavron was ostensibly on California state felony probation the entire time.

It’s said that it is all too easy for assault allegations to ruin men’s lives. But in Rafi Gavron’s case, it seems, charges of domestic violence did not stop his star from being born.

Jenny Singer is the deputy life/features editor for the Forward. You can reach her at Singer@forward.com or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny

(Haaretz) The modest apartment in one of the side streets of Bnei Brak, where Shimon Hayut grew up, is light-years away from the private jets, racing cars and luxury hotels in which he has been spending his time in recent years. Hayut, 28, lived the hedonistic life of a millionaire. Not any old millionaire, but supposedly the wayward son of Russian-born diamond mogul Lev Leviev.

To anyone who falls into his web and is tricked by his sharp tongue, Hayut says that he left religion, and that his family showers him with money so he’ll stay away from them. That’s what he said, for example, to a contractor from Nahariya whom he met at the Etnachta club in Tel Aviv, while he was surrounded by women and ordering drinks for everyone.

Hayut even formally changed his last name to Leviev, so that his driver’s license and passport would prove his credibility, says the contractor. Like him, most of those around Hayut are unaware – until it’s too late – that the charming guy is a con man who has now fled to avoid trial in Israel, was formerly imprisoned in Finland and is wanted for fraud in several countries, including Norway and the United Kingdom.

A few weeks ago, after six months of intensive research that crossed borders and continents, the staff of the Norwegian tabloid VG located Hayut in Munich, Germany. The journalists began to take an interest in Hayut after it turned out that a young Norwegian woman fell victim to his scam and loaned him hundreds of thousands of dollars that were never returned to her.

The woman, Cecilie Schrøder Fjellhøy, approached VG and agreed to reveal her name and expose all her correspondence with Hayut, including video clips he had sent her to show his life of luxury.

The reporters soon discovered that Simon Leviev, as he calls himself, is actually an Israeli man who served a prison sentence in Finland, was extradited to Israel and tried there but disappeared before being sentenced, and turned up in various European capitals as a mysterious millionaire, accompanied by a personal assistant, secretary and bodyguard.

Fjellhøy, who flew with Hayut in his private planes and saw his lifestyle before loaning him money, told the newspaper that he seemed trustworthy, and that the fact that he was surrounded by people dispelled any doubts she had.

Hayut grew up in the predominantly ultra-Orthodox city of Bnei Brak in central Israel and as a child studied in a Talmud Torah elementary school near his home. His father, Yohanan Hayut, is the chief rabbi of El Al.

According to the indictment filed against him in the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court, Hayut began his acts of fraud some years ago. For example, according to the charge sheet, at the age of 20 he stole checks from a family in Kiryat Ono when he babysat for their 4-year-old son. He abandoned the child in the stairwell when he heard that the child’s mother was at the police station, filing a complaint about the theft of her money.

Hayut stole other checks from the family of a businessman living in Herzliya Pituah, in whose home he worked as a handyman. He used the money to buy a Porsche and to take flying lessons in Haifa.

Although he never completed the civilian flight course, Hayut sometimes presented himself as a pilot. A classmate in the course said that he himself fell victim to a scam perpetrated by Hayut, after being persuaded by him to invest in a deal to import clothing that never came to fruition. It goes without saying that the classmate never again saw the money he invested.

Hayut fled Israel with a forged passport, and was brought back only after serving a three-year prison sentence for defrauding three women in Finland. An updated indictment was filed against him in 2017, but he was released on bail paid by his brother and a friend – and disappeared again.

Now it turns out that the scope of Hayut’s alleged acts of fraud has only multiplied over the years, and included several instances of exploiting young women who loaned him money. The reporters at VG found him in Munich thanks to a tip from a Swedish woman who fell into Hayut’s trap and cooperated with the tabloid by contacting and agreeing to meet with him. When she confronted him in a conversation recorded by the newspaper, Hayut denied that he had defrauded her.

Lev Leviev has filed a complaint with the Israel Police against Hayut, and its Tel Aviv district fraud unit confirms that Hayut is wanted for questioning. The attorney who represented him at the beginning of proceedings against him, Yaki Cohen, said that he lost contact with Hayut in recent months.

(JTA) — He’s spent eight years trying to land a spacecraft on the moon, but when Yonatan Winetraub stood on the launchpad this month at Florida’s Cape Canaveral, he was still in shock.

“I stood right next to the rocket, and it’s pretty big,” Winetraub said in a phone interview Wednesday. “In the video, you don’t see how big the rocket is and how powerful it is. But when you stand up close it’s pretty powerful.”

If Winetraub sounds like a kid marveling at the thought of space travel, that’s because he kind of is. He and two friends, all in their 30s, are on the verge of doing something extraordinary: They intend to make Israel the fourth country to land a spacecraft on the moon. Only the United States, the Soviet Union and China have done it.

Winetraub and his partners, Kfir Damari and Yariv Bash, aren’t doing it with billions of dollars from a superpower government. In 2011 they co-founded SpaceIL, an Israeli nonprofit that has a budget of $100 million — a pittance in the space biz. If their mission is successful, it would be the first time any private spacecraft landed on the moon, at lower cost and with a smaller craft than previous landings.

“Kfir, Yariv and myself sat in a bar in a suburb of Tel Aviv and thought, ‘Why not get to the moon?’” Winetraub said at a news conference Wednesday. “I always thought we’re going to get to the moon, but now it’s actually happening, and it’s quite incredible.”

SpaceIL’s squat, circular, three-legged craft is roughly the size of a compact car: 5 feet tall, 6 1/2 feet in diameter and weighing about 1,300 pounds, most of which is fuel. At 8:45 p.m. Eastern time Thursday, barring bad weather or unforeseen problems, the craft will launch into space from Florida hitched to one of Elon Musk’s SpaceX rockets. Winetraub called it the “Uber of space travel.”

More like UberPool, the car pool option: Whereas Apollo 11’s 1969 trip to the moon took three days, SpaceIL’s will take about two months. That’s because it’s riding shotgun on another rocket and cannot propel itself directly to the moon. Instead it has to use orbiting to align itself, only meeting up with the moon at the beginning of April.

About four minutes after launch, the SpaceIL craft, named Beresheet — Hebrew for “Genesis” — will separate from the rocket. It will send a first communication to SpaceIL’s ground control in the central Israeli town of Yehud and go into orbit around the Earth. Over the course of about a month-and-a-half it will hurtle through space at a maximum speed of more than 22,000 miles per hour. Its thrusters will push the craft in progressively wider and wider orbits around the Earth, and closer to the moon’s orbit.

Then it will enter one of the riskiest steps of the mission.

Once it gets near the moon, the craft must suddenly slow down enough to be pulled into orbit around the moon. If it goes too fast, it will pass right by, speeding directly into space. Then, after about a week of traveling around the moon, the craft will slow down again, dropping toward its landing spot on the Sea of Serenity. About 16 feet up, it will cut the engine entirely and free-fall to the moon’s surface, making a soft landing.

SpaceIL’s founders are confident that the mission will be successful. But Winetraub acknowledged that it’s fraught.

“There are many things that can go wrong and only one thing that can go right,” he said. “You really can’t test everything. The atmosphere is different on the moon, the gravity is different on the moon, so you have to have some simulations, some educated guesses about how it’s going to work.”

There were early hiccups. At the news conference, Winetraub wanted to show an inspiring video about the history of moon landings. Except the sound wouldn’t work. Then the sound came on, but the screen went blue.

“Can we have the sound?” Winetraub asked, chuckling. “The sound is more difficult than getting to the moon. We’ll give it one more try.”

To even reach this point was an unlikely journey for SpaceIL, whose story is a quintessential Israeli startup tale. It was founded to compete in Google’s Lunar XPrize, a contest to see who could build the first private spacecraft to reach the moon. The co-founders submitted their application right at the deadline, Dec. 31, 2010, and went through a few failed experiments before building the right craft.

The first model was the size of a Coke bottle. When that didn’t work, the team made the craft the size of a dishwasher. Now they’re up to a car.

“It is rocket science,” Winetraub said, explaining the difficulty. “If it doesn’t work the first time, that’s OK, but the second time around you expect it to work, so that was hard. We did it again and the design you now see on the launchpad is the third or fourth iteration.”

The XPrize shut down without a winner last year, but along the way SpaceIL received enough funding to keep going. It’s working in partnership with Israel Aerospace Industries, and its donors include the U.S. billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, South African-Israeli billionaire Morris Kahn and Canadian-Israeli real estate mogul Sylvan Adams.

The mission has also become a kind of cause celebre. Buzz Aldrin, who knows something about getting to the moon, tweeted his best wishes Wednesday. His Apollo 11 mission landed on the lunar surface nearly 50 years ago.

“If the #SpaceIL mission is successful this Thursday, Israel will become the fourth country to land an aircraft on the moon,” he wrote. “Good luck, Beresheet!”

The spacecraft will raise an Israeli flag once it reaches the moon. It will carry a time capsule with the entire Bible printed in microscopic text on a coin, along with hundreds of other documents compressed onto small discs: dictionaries, encyclopedias, and Jewish and Israeli texts like the Israeli national anthem and the traditional Jewish prayer for travelers.

The mission also will include scientific research. In partnership with NASA and The Weizmann Institute, an Israeli university, the craft will test the moon’s magnetic field in addition to taking photos and video. After two days the craft will be shut off and the mission will be complete.

But SpaceIL doesn’t think its work will end there. The organization also hopes to inspire Israeli kids to go into science and engineering by showing them that space exploration is achievable. Its educational programs have already reached a million children, whom SpaceIL engages by asking them to help solve certain problems the craft might face, like how to stabilize with fuel sloshing around inside. The craft’s time capsule also will include drawings from Israeli kids.

And SpaceIL is hoping to engage the Israeli public in the mission. There is even a Spotify playlist of Israeli songs appropriate for the launch featuring “Space Shuttles” by the Israeli singer Berry Sakharof.

“It’s the first Israeli spacecraft, but hopefully not the last,” Damari, another co-founder, said at the news conference.

When kids ask him if the craft will return, he says, “We tell them no, it stays there with the time capsule and all sorts of interesting things inside. It’s your job to reach the moon and bring it back.”

(JTA) — Jussie Smollett was charged with a felony for making a false police report in which the “Empire” actor said he was the victim of a hate attack last month in Chicago.

Smollett, who is black, Jewish and gay, was charged Wednesday with felony disorder conduct, which carries a prison sentence of up to three years and could require him to repay police for the cost of the investigation. That could run to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Smollett was taken into police custody on Thursday morning in Chicago.

Fox Entertainment has said it is not cutting Smollett’s openly gay character, Jamal Lyon, on “Empire.” Deadline Hollywood reported Wednesday, however, that there are rumors the character’s scenes have been trimmed or cut in the episodes being filmed and the network is considering suspending Smollett from the show or putting him on some form of leave.

Police believe Smollett paid two Nigerian brothers to stage the Jan. 29 attack in downtown Chicago. The brothers, one who appears in “Empire,” testified Wednesday before a grand jury.

Smollett has denied involvement in the assault in which he told police that two men “gained his attention by yelling out racial and homophobic slurs towards him” before attacking, pouring an “unknown chemical substance” on him and wrapping a rope around his neck. They said “This is MAGA country” as they fled, he also told police.