Rabbi Meiselman's Lectures and the Response
The First Lecture (45 meg mp3 file)
The Second Lecture (50 meg mp3 file)
The Third Lecture (48 meg mp3 file)
Letter to Rabbi Meiselman in Response (Rabbi Meiselman did not respond to this letter other than to send a request that I remove his lectures from my website on the grounds that "they were only intended for his yeshivah.")
Rejoinder to Dovid Kornreich/ "Freelance Kiruv Maniac" blog
Note: In the first lecture, Rabbi Meiselman alleges that I was "thrown
out of the yeshivah" in Manchester many years ago "for inappropriate
behavior."
This allegation was subsequently defended by a student of his from the
Torah Moshe kollel, Dovid Kornreich, who maintains an anti-Slifkin blog under the
alias "Freelance Keiruv Maniac."
The allegation is an absolute lie.
At no point in my time at Shaarei Torah in Manchester did
anyone throw me out, ask me to leave, or anything of the
sort.
(Nor would they have had any reason to - I was a very shy 17 year-old
who barely opened his mouth. I am sure that they would strongly object
to my recent work, but that was years in the future when I was at
Shaarei Torah.)
When I surprised them with the news that I had decided to leave and
join my family in Israel, the members of the faculty that I told - my
maggid shiur, Rabbi Chaim Mordechai Zahn, and another maggid shiur,
Rabbi Yossi Cohen, with whom I was close -
they both spent a lot of time trying to talk me out of it, and even
offered various incentives for me to stay.
The Rosh Yeshivah, Rav Gavriel Knopfler, tried to convince me that
none of the options that I was considering in Israel, such as Toras
Moshe, were suitable.
Any of this can be corroborated by speaking to any of the above people.
It has been a source of distress and disturbance to see that some
of my ideological opponents also resort to ad hominem slander in order
to bolster their case against me.
Kornreich subsequently deleted his defense of this slander from his
blog, after I threatened to sue him for defamation of character.
However he then subtly reissued it by insisting that Rabbi Meiselman had reliable evidence to support his allegation.
There is no reason why he should be able to issue slander against me and attack my work
while comfortably hiding behind anonymity.
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