Highly respected haredi teacher and mother of four 66-year old Zivia Rotenberg is accused of repetitively sexually abusing minors. According to her lawyer, "She rejects all these accusations."
The full article will be published Friday by Yifat Erlich in Israel Hayom.
For decades, Rotenberg was considered to be a revered teacher of the Beit Yaakov Beit Yisrael girls' elementary school in Jerusalem. An investigation to be published Friday in Israel Hayom brings the testimony of five women, who describe in their own words how Rotenberg harassed, abused, and hurt them.
Rotenberg, a mother of four, grew up in Jerusalem as the daughter of a well-known and influential family in the haredi community. Her uncle, the late Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, was considered one of the greatest leaders of his generation during his lifetime, and his halakhic rulings were accepted by all factions of Orthodox Judaism.
For the past four years, Rotenberg has served as the high school principal at the prestigious Lithuanian seminary "Maalot Beit Yaakov," located in Ramat Shlomo - a Jerusalem neighborhood named after her prestigious uncle.
From the accumulated evidence, a pattern emerges in which Rotenberg used to harass and sexually and mentally abuse her students for years. Most of them were minors who were under her authority.
"I showed up almost once a week at Zivia Rotenberg's house in the Ezrat Torah neighborhood of Jerusalem," describes M., then 14, now 39. "The official purpose of the meetings was to strengthen my outlook, because I had questions of faith. Most of the time I was with her completely alone in her home."
"At first, we would just study together and talk, but then she started stroking me over the clothes. Then she also started hugging me, and then came kisses on the mouth, with tongue. I was then a completely innocent girl, with no hint of understanding in sexuality, and she was a mature woman, already forty, an authoritative and sought-after educator who all wanted to be close to. "