- Last year, after a 15-year campaign, her abuser, Malka Leifer, who had fled to Israel, was tried and sentenced, convicted of 18 charges of sexual abuse against Erlich and her sister, Elly.
- (She was acquitted of charges involving a third Erlich sister, Nicole.)
- But when her need was most acute, Erlich could not have contacted any of these services.
Adass Israel ‘evokes 19th-century Europe’
- As with most ultra-Orthodox Judaism, Adass Israel originated in 19th-century Europe as a conservative reaction to liberal secularism.
- The cut of the men’s black silk coats worn with white shirts, and their mink hats, come from that time and place.
- The Australian congregation was only formed in 1939, but the tiny enclave within East St Kilda and Ripponlea where Melbourne’s Adass Israel community lives effectively evokes 19th-century Europe.
- Her parents had joined a generation later, as converts to Orthodoxy after emigrating from England.
- She notes that as a result, “my mother was on a mission to prove her worth to the Adass community”.
- Erlich writes that from a young age, she realised her mother’s rage “had no rhyme or reason, no trigger we could predict”.
- The children were punished by being deprived of food and even the ability to go to the toilet at night.
- Marriages are arranged via matchmakers, and couples have few meetings before their wedding.
- Erlich writes that the first time she had an unsupervised conversation with her former husband, Shua Erlich, was on their wedding day.
- Such is the fear of contamination by gender, unrelated girls and boys do not mix after they turn three.
‘It was just a woman’
When Dassi Erlich was in year nine, in December 2002, a new principal was appointed to the girls’ school. Malka Leifer had come from Israel with excellent references and appeared to be everything this devout congregation could desire. Erlich writes of “the respect and awe” the schoolgirls felt in the presence of this charismatic woman, who exuded authority.
- Her mother was flattered when Leifer offered to give her daughter private lessons out of school hours, to advance her religious education.
- Erlich wrote of these “lessons” that “I never found my words” to object to the continuing assaults on her body.
- The account of her inability to escape is hard to read, but is also hard to stop reading.
- It is hardly surprising the Adass community reacted to the news of the principal’s criminal behaviour in the same way.
Unrestrained power, control and authority
- When Erlich becomes suicidal after the birth of her daughter, her husband’s liberal Jewish father pays for her admission to the Albert Road psychiatric clinic.
- The end of her marriage was inevitable, as were her many missteps on the way to freedom.
- In enclosed sects, whatever their complexion, those who leave and speak out against misbehaviour are shunned, often losing all contact with their families.
- The response of the Orthodox Jewish community to the truths exposed by Erlich and her siblings was as expected.
- In 2016, a year after the judge in Erlich’s civil case ruled that “Leifer’s appalling misconduct […] was built on this position of unrestrained power, control and authority that had been bestowed on her by the Board”, Adass Israel was the subject of a television documentary, Strictly Jewish.
Global quest for justice
- Instead, she was released from custody, feigning a mental illness that had turned her into a zombie-like state.
- The book details the behaviour of Israeli medical, legal and political figures in their efforts to prevent Leifer from facing trial.
- Jewish politicians, both Liberal and Labor, led their colleagues in supporting the sisters’ quest to bring Malka Leifer to judgement.
- Erlich’s account of how her predator was eventually brought to justice shows how well these siblings learnt to work with the once unfamiliar outlet of social media.
- After their Facebook group was trolled by Leifer’s supporters, they established a Twitter thread, #bringleiferback.
- Although the extradition, trial and conviction of Malka Leifer was a group effort, full credit for bringing her to justice must go to the sisters – Dassi Erlich, Elly Sapper and Nicole Meyer.
- This is a very self-aware memoir: Erlich and her sisters know they need to take control of their own narrative.
Joanna Mendelssohn has in the past received funding from the Australian Research Council
