By Amy Neustein, Ph.D.
FORT LEE, New Jersey — In the swirl of conspiracy theories targeting Jeffrey Epstein’s cadre of high-profile clients for naturally wanting to see him silenced, the real motive behind Epstein’s suicide at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in 2019 may have been overlooked.
I had a brief encounter with Jeffrey Epstein myself. It was sometime in the 90s when I was at my parents’ home in Brooklyn. My father was a prominent rabbi whose synagogue, The Jewish Center of Brighton Beach (where Nicolas Cage would later be filmed in Lord of War), was a stone’s throw from where Jeffrey Epstein grew up in the Seagate section of Brooklyn. My father would often be called upon to privately counsel those facing the difficulties of public life. As a member of the clergy he kept these matters strictly confidential.
One day I recall how the phone rang at the Brooklyn home. I took the call. It was Jeffrey Epstein on the line asking to speak to “the rabbi” about a “highly personal matter.” Epstein was noticeably upset. Writing in the San Diego Jewish World shortly after Epstein’s suicide, I said: “I could see my father was visibly shaken [after the call] and I knew something was wrong.” My father never uttered a word because confidentiality was sacrosanct to him as a member of the clergy.
Years later when I read the headline news reports of Jeffrey Epstein having strangled himself with his bedsheets at the Manhattan jail where he was awaiting trial on child-sex trafficking charges, I realized that this detestable child-sex trafficker who had reached out to my father for rabbinic guidance so many years prior might have actually taken his life to spare both himself and the Jewish community from a Shanda – profound community shame.
It is not disputed that Epstein donated regularly to Jewish charities in Israel and the US, as shown in his tax filings. He gave money to a study program in Jerusalem, to a Jewish day school in Manhattan, to YIVO, and he gave handsomely to the UJA-Federation of New York. The list goes on. And perhaps most ironic, it even includes Jewish women’s organizations in spite of his sexual exploitation of young girls.
A protracted trial, or a stringent plea agreement for that matter, would have landed him in prison for years. The swarm of press stories would have inevitably damaged the name of the Jewish community, using Epstein as the emblem of a Jewish sex trafficker. In fact, news reports showed how much he detested being called a pedophile. But having his name emblazoned as a “Jewish pedophile” would have been far worse.
Shanda is a socially regulating principle that controls much of Jewish life mostly for the good. However, sometimes it has the opposite effect. For example, a virulent sex abuse coverup that harms innocent victims can happen in the Orthodox community for fear of a Shanda. And in extreme cases, sexual predators have been known to take their own lives. Just a few years ago a famous Jewish children’s author, Chaim Walder, committed suicide when it came out that he was a pedophile. Ashamed of his actions for both his family and for the community, Walder abruptly ended his life.
Epstein’s suicide coincided with a very important day on the Jewish calendar. It was one day before Tisha B’av, regarded as the saddest day of the Jewish year when as a community Jews commemorate the destruction of both the first and second Holy Temple. It is a day of mourning, when fasting and reflection occupy the minds and hearts of the Jewish community. One of the reasons for the destruction was the aberrant and transgressive behavior by members of the community.
Having taken his life right before the pivotal fast day makes it hard to escape the fact that Epstein’s suicide might have arguably – and in the most twisted way – been a “sacrificial” act in his own mind, a way of effacing his own memory so that he would not bring down the Jewish people. He knew his name would soon become the blight on the Jewish community as the case was ramping up.
Strangling himself, perhaps he thought, would smother the antisemitism that his name would engender.
Yet, one may easily argue that his self-strangulation boomeranged. It left the world figuratively “hanging” as to what lies beneath his extensive network of sexual exploitation and trafficking? Who was involved and who benefitted? And these are important questions that will tragically keep his name in the burning embers of the past he tried so desperately to erase.
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Amy Neustein, Ph.D. (Sociology) is the author/editor of 16 academic books. Her two books on child-sex abuse are From Madness to Mutiny: Why Mothers are Running from the Family Courts –and What Can Be Done about It, and Tempest in the Temple: Jewish Communities and Child-Sex Scandals.”