By Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel
CHULA VISTA, California — Recently I came across an interesting but unusual halachic question: Can a Jewish pimp receive an Aliya on Shabbat? The original questioned pertained to a pimp who was the only Levite in his community. The question came to the attention of the famous Iraqi Sephardic Rabbi Yosef Haim ben Elijah, the Hacham (the Sephardic name for Sage) of Baghdad (1835-1909).
Although an answer to such a question ought to be self-explanatory, the Hacham’s answer strikes one as counter-intuitive.
This morning I researched the question in the Bar Ilan Responsa library and the topic may be found in the Responsa Rav Po’alim Vol. 2, Section OH Responsa #18.
Rabbi Yosef Haim differentiates between a pimp, whose clientele consists of Gentile women, vis-à-vis a pimp who also uses Jewish prostitutes. If it is the latter, then the synagogue cannot honor the pimp, which is no different than honoring a person who sells non-kosher meat to the Jewish community—an activity that this expressly forbidden in Jewish law. Gentiles, on the other hand, depend upon the status of the prostitute. If the prostitute happens to be married—then the activity is forbidden for the Jewish pimp to put “a stumbling block before the blind.” Alternatively, if the women are single—then the pimp is allowed to benefit from their work. Such a man may be honored, according to Rabbi Yosef Haim.
Interestingly enough, Rabbi Yosef Haim does acknowledge the possibility that the Jewish pimp might be seducing Jewish men to sin, but this fear does not seem to influence his final decision. Maimonides writes in his Mishnah Torah that a man should keep no less than four cubits away from being near a bordello or a prostitute.[1]
Rabbi Yosef Haim’s lack of moral clarity in his thinking is very surprising, as it is disturbing. With respect to Torah honors, it has been a longstanding custom for people in the congregation to make a donation for receiving the honor of being called up to the Torah.
However, with respect to the Jewish pimp there is an obvious problem. The Torah explicitly teaches, “You shall not bring the fee of a prostitute or the wages of a male prostitute into the house of the Lord your God in payment for any vow, for both of these are abhorrent to the Lord your God (Deut. 23:18). By honoring the Jewish pimp, one shows that synagogue is acting with complete complicity and moral approval of the Jewish pimp’s vocational activity. In addition, by taking monies donated by the Jewish pimp, the synagogue is explicitly violating the scriptural proscription mentioned above. Thirdly, the synagogue leadership is guilty of desecrating God’s Name to the Jewish and Gentile community; not to mention, Rabbi Yosef Haim is implying that the degradation of Gentile women is not inherently evil or morally wrong.
According to a little-known female Jewish activist, Bertha Pappeheim, Jewish participation in the white slavery business in Europe was nothing less than alarming. According to police reports in Berlin and London in 1908 and in Hamburg in 1905, 37% of the traffickers were Jewish. According to a B’nai Brith Report dating back to 1912, 271 out of 402 traffickers in Central, Eastern Europe and South America were Jewish. Granted, anti-Semitism may have skewed some of these figures somewhat, but the presence of Jews in the white slavery industry is very disturbing.[2]
There is a YNET news article dating back to 2007 featured an article about the Jewish bordellos of Buenos Aires, which housed 60-80 sex slaves in the Jewish quarter of Junin Street. Author Ilan Sheinfeld, whose book “The Tale of a Ring” describes this problem in graphic terms:
- Yet, as the whorehoses and pimps prospered, the Jewish community rejected them. Articles in the local press condemned them and, in 1885, the community established a Jewish Association for the Protection of Women and Girls. Ads posted on the walls in the Jewish quarter called on the locals not to rent their shops to the rufianos. On their part, the pimps very much wanted to be part of the community. The wealthiest among them used to pick a new girl every night and take her out to the theater, “which was the center of cultural life in the city. Jewish theater was very successful then . . .”
She adds further:
- The Jewish communities used to throw fund-raising parties, importing European star performers. The pimps would show up every night because they intended to show off their merchandise, wished to maintain their status, and also wanted be like everybody else. This is why they made donations, which made the community deliberate whether it wanted their money. On the one hand, the community needed money to build public buildings, but on the other hand, it was ‘dirty’ money and by taking it they feared they would be legitimizing or tacitly accepting the criminals’ exploitation of women. This ended one night when Nahum Sorkin, a well-known Zionist activist, stood outside the theater and physically stopped the rufianos from entering. Next, they were banned from the synagogues, and to top it all, they were refused burial in the Jewish cemetery. [3]
Today, Israel has over a 2 billion dollar industry in the sexual trafficking business. As Jews, we need to be aware of these facts and hold our political and religious institutions of power and influence responsible for the exploitation of women. It would seem that Catholics are not the only ones who have problems with the exploitation of women and children; we also have serious ethical issues that demand a thoughtful and moral response.
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Rabbi Samuel is spiritual leader of Temple Beth Shalom in Chula Vista, California. He may be contacted via Michael.samuel@sdjewishworld.com