A short history of Israeli drug-dealing rabbis

The news that an Israeli-born British rabbi was moonlighting as a hooker-loving cocaine dealer with a Muslim business partner has been predictably lampooned on websites like Gawker:

Rabbi Baruch Chalomish is on trial in England for operating what prosecutors call a “commercial cocaine-supply operation” and paying prostitutes with coke. That’s the bad news. The good news is that his partner in crime is named Nasir Abbas. Peace is possible, people. If Jews and Arabs can work together to sell cocaine and service hookers, what can’t they accomplish?

Chalomish, a native of Tel Aviv who moved to Britain at 23, served as the head of a Manchester yeshiva and also reportedly spent £1,000 weekly on coke parties for local prostitutes and himself.

But Chalomish is just one in a series of Israeli ultra-Orthodox and Hasidic men of the cloth who have been caught in drug scandals. As it goes, Jewish seminary students and ecstasy seem to have a long history together.

Strangely, it’s rarely members of the mainstream Modern Orthodox movement who go for smuggling drugs through airport security queues and smearing coke under the noses of prostitutes. Instead, it always seems to be clergy from the sects that consciously isolate themselves from the outside world.

Perhaps something about growing up extremely sheltered, full of naivete and with an alternative value system from mainstream society leads to drug abuse? Below, some highlights (lowlights):

1. In the late 1990s, Israeli ecstasy dealer Sean Erez (who had sidelines in frozen yogurt parlors and clothing stores) was busted by the FBI for using Hasidic Jewish seminarians as mules to traffic ecstasy into the United States. The mules were largely unaware of their cargo and were promised free trips to Europe and $1500 in exchange for carrying sealed suitcases into Europe. Mules were recruited through Hasidic seminary classmates who were also involved in the underworld:

Several couriers who were caught have already pleaded guilty and become confidential informants in exchange for reduced charges. Officials said the informers proved crucial to cracking the conspiracy. They also revealed the extent to which the ring’s organizers, several of whom are Orthodox Jews, allegedly took advantage of their connections in the insular Orthodox Jewish communities of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and Monsey, N.Y. Offering $200 finder’s fees, the drug ring managed to infiltrate yeshivas and Jewish rabbinical schools, and recruit students they hoped would pass unsuspected through customs. Most of the couriers were between 18 and 20 years old.

2. In 2003, federal prosecutors busted a multinational ecstasy and cocaine-smuggling ring headed by a Hasidic Jew from upstate New York:

Court papers describe an import-export operation with branches in the Netherlands, Colombia, Florida and Texas, and Swiss bank accounts swollen with cash smuggled in and out of the United States in parcels labeled “jewelry.”

The operation was run by Natan Banda, 31, who lives in Brooklyn and in Kiryas Joel, a Hasidic community in Rockland County, N.Y., according to a complaint unsealed yesterday. Drug traffickers would call Mr. Banda on one of two cellphones designated the blue phone and the red phone and arrange to give him money in amounts of hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, which he would have converted into numerous small-denomination checks, the court papers say. [...] The ring members enthusiastically discussed business with one another by telephone, the complaint says. For instance, last June, Mr. Banda received a call from Nathan Weiss, who also was arrested yesterday, asking if certain deposits had cleared. When Mr. Banda confirmed that they had, Mr. Weiss responded, ”Praise the Lord!, It’s a great thing!” the complaint says.

3. In April 2008, Japanese authorities at Narita Airport found three Israeli hasids from the Satmar sect smuggling a collective 90,000 ecstasy pills in their suitcases. One of the brains behind the operation, seminarian Ben Zion Miller, is believed to have been involved in the Abergil mafia family. One of the Hasidic Jews was sentenced to eight years in a Japanese prison. The sentenced man, who was a minor at the time, appears to have been tricked into carrying the suitcase. Him and two other seminarians were recruited by Miller and another Israeli, Haim Roter, to smuggle ecstasy into Japan from Amsterdam.

The excellent ex-Lubavitch blog Failed Messiah also has many more Hasidic Judaism-and-drug-dealing stories. With that said, we wish a hearty Shabbat Shalom to our Jewish readership.