Excerpt:

Off the record, Brooklyn political players acknowledge another factor: The Shomrim have juice.

"There's no getting around the fact that this community has an enormous amount of power in Brooklyn politics," says one elected official who didn't wish to be identified for fear of alienating constituents. "They're the most disciplined voting bloc there is—people vote for who their rabbis tell them to vote for. That gives them a power totally out of proportion to their actual size. You can't run for office without kissing those rings."

That sort of influence certainly helps keep the Shomrim funded. It also makes it harder for elected officials and their appointees to push back when the Shomrim want to do things their way.

The most heat the Shomrim took in the aftermath of the Kletzky murder wasn't for failing to find the boy or for waiting too long to call the cops. It came with the revelation that the Shomrim actually maintain a list of suspected child molesters in the neighborhood that they will not share with police.

"The community doesn't go to the police with these names because the rabbis don't let you. It's not right," Shomrim coordinator Jacob Daskel told the Daily News shortly after Kletzky's body was found.

The statement resonated because it placed the Shomrim at the heart of an issue that has been bubbling in the Haredi community for the better part of a decade: a sex- abuse epidemic akin to the far more publi- cized scandal rocking the Catholic Church.

"The Shomrim have helped the police maintain a community that's mostly free of the shootings in the streets and crimes that usually end up in the media," says Ben Hirsch, a founder of the advocacy group Survivors for Justice. "But you do still have some of the terrible social crimes that police would normally be responding to. Instead, within these communities, these crimes are usually reported to Shomrim, and the Shomrim coordinators working together with Orthodox Jewish "community liaisons" cover it up, and it never gets to the cops."

One e-mail Lesher received came from Rabbi Yoel Schonfeld, an officer of the Orthodox Union, one of the oldest Orthodox organizations in America, best known for its kosher certification on food.

"My question to you as an Orthodox Jew," Schonfeld wrote, "is what compelled you to write an article in the secular press trashing our fellow Jews? Especially in a media which is notorious for its hatred of Orthodox Judaism? Why couldn't you keep your comments to yourself? If you needed to unburden yourself, write in the Jewish Week for G-d's sake which would be all too glad to print an anti-Ortho diatribe. Haven't we Jews ever learned that when we spill our laundry in the non Jewish public it only comes to haunt us?"

Clearly upset, Schonfeld went on: "Your article may prove to be one of the most treacherous acts of mesira in modern times."

Schonfeld's invocation of mesira, the religious prohibition on betraying another Jew to government authorities, touched on something at the heart of the ongoing debate inside the Haredi community, not only about how it treats sex abuse, but about how it will relate with the city and country around it.

In Talmudic commentary, mesira is a crime against the community, punishable by death, without any form of trial.

Read the full story here:

http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-09-07/news/gotham-s-crusaders-shomrim-jewish-neighborhood-patrol/