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Man Who Threw Bleach at Rabbi Avoids Jail

Sentenced to five years probation for 2012 attack on Nuchem Rosenberg

by
Lily Wilf
April 30, 2014
Brooklyn Supreme Court. (Wikimedia)
Brooklyn Supreme Court. (Wikimedia)

A Hasidic man who threw bleach in the face of a Brooklyn rabbi in 2012 has been sentenced to five years probation, the New York Daily News reports. Meilech Schnitzler, 38, pleaded guilty to felony assault for throwing bleach at Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg as he walked past Schnitzler’s Brooklyn fish market on December 11, 2012. Rosenberg, a well-known advocate for victims of sexual abuse in the haredi community, had reportedly accused Schnitzler’s father of being a molester.

The bleach-throwing incident occurred the day after Hasidic youth counselor Nechemya Weberman was convicted on 59 counts of sexual abuse against a teenage girl whom Rosenberg supported throughout the judicial process.

Rosenberg, who was treated for burns on his face and in his left eye, criticized the court’s sentence as being farr too lenient. “Six months in jail would have been enough to show this was serious. Probation in our circles is a joke,” he told the New York Times.

Lily Wilf is an editorial intern at Tablet.