The Vizhnitz Hasidic court, which is among the biggest and most powerful in Israel, expelled the head of its yeshiva in 2016 after he was suspected of sexual offenses against his students and amid concerns that the victims would file a complaint with the police.
An investigation was later opened against the rabbi, Efraim Tessler, on suspicion of sex offenses, but was eventually closed because the alleged victims refused to cooperate. Witnesses attributed the refusal to pressure exerted on them by the Vizhnitz court as well as promises to keep the rabbi off the grounds of the yeshiva.
A source who was involved in closing the investigation told that at least one of the alleged victims had signed an agreement to remain silent in order to save Tessler from criminal proceedings.
According to at least two statements, Yaakov Tessler, the rabbi’s son, and as of this week the deputy culture and sports minister, was involved in the affair, along with the heads of the Vizhnitz court, specifically in preventing criminal proceedings from being filed and the boys from cooperating with police investigators.
The affair was kept a secret inside the Vizhnitz court. Officials in the United Torah Judaism party were unaware of the affair or that Yaakov Tessler, who is a UTJ Knesset member, was involved in helping to silence the affair.
The younger Tessler is the Vizhnitz representative in UTJ’s Agudat Yisrael faction and an important political power in the Hasidic community. He was elected to the Knesset for the first time in 2019 and reelected to the current Knesset. Before that, he was a member of the Ashdod City Council and an aide to Yaakov Litzman when he was health minister.
Tessler’s father, Efraim, is a senior rabbinic figure in the Vizhnitz community, which is centered in Bnei Brak. The father served for many years as the head of the Damesek Eliezer Vizhnitz Yeshiva in Jerusalem, an Orthodox Jewish elementary school for boys aged 13-16.
In 2016, police received the first complaint about sexual offenses by the rabbi against students. Investigators found one complainant willing to make a statement. In November 2017, the head of the yeshiva was arrested on charges of performing acts of sodomy on minors aged 14-16, non-consensual sodomy and indecent acts. The rabbi was ordered to stay away from the yeshiva and the complainants, with his son acting as a guarantor.
Police sources said they had evidence that there were at least four victims in the affair, but the four refused to cooperate with investigators, despite repeated efforts.
“Every place we turned to, we found that they had gotten there before us and closed that door. We understood that someone was pressuring them not to talk,” a police source told. He said investigators arranged a confrontation between one of the victims and the rabbi, who denied the allegations.
In 2018, the police closed the case, and at the same time Efraim Tessler was dismissed from his post at the yeshiva. According to one account given to the police, the campaign both to expel the rabbi and keep the affair quiet was led by the Admor of Vizhnitz, Rabbi Yisroel Hager, and Yaakov Tessler.
A source who was involved in the affair said that at least one victim was offered money as part of the agreement as compensation for the harm done to him and in order to dissuade him from filing a complaint. In doing so, the court succeeded in preventing the elder Tessler from prosecution that could have led to his conviction and imprisonment. Today, the senior Tessler holds no official position in the community but remains a respected member.
Vizhnitz court and Rabbi Efraim Tessler could not be reached for comment. A spokesman for MK Yaakov Tessler, said that he would not comment on “gossip and slander.”
