Friday, December 07, 2012
Profitable not-for-profits
Satmar Hasidim — they're just like everybody else!
New Yorkers got a look inside the insular culture of ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn this week thanks to the sexual-abuse trial of a prominent Hasidic leader in Williamsburg.
Despite all the outward oddities of the man on trial — his black suit, untrimmed beard and lengthy side-curls — it turns out he's right smack in the mainstream of secular political life in New York.
He has a not-for-profit cash cow, too.
Nechemya Weberman, an unlicensed counselor accused of sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl in his care, testified Wednesday that he ripped off a charity he founded ostensibly to help poor Brooklynites.
"You used this not-for-profit for personal gain?" asked a Brooklyn prosecutor.
"Yes I did," Weberman replied, admitting that he spent donations meant for his group, B'Lev V'Nefesh, on tuition for his kids' yeshiva — and that its cash was also spent at stores like BMG Corset & Lingerie.
Creepy, sure. But par for the course in New York, where politicians routinely turn nonprofits into personal piggy banks.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/profitable_not_for_profits_6tIH1u57fmmFSAW1SPJkMN
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