For Jews, Chanukah is a season of light and miracles. It wasn’t like that last month for Sam Kellner, a chasidic resident of Brooklyn’s Borough Park.
Unemployed and facing mounting debt from his lonely fight against both the powers that be in his community and the Brooklyn district attorney, Kellner, 50, was contemplating a Chanukah in darkness: he had pawned the family silver, and the menorah along with it, to free up some cash to pay his attorney.
When his wife found out, she was upset, so Kellner trudged back to the silver shop on 13th Avenue to retrieve the menorah.
If anyone could use a miracle, it’s Sam Kellner.
“They took everything from me,” Kellner says. “They’ve killed me on the street, kicked me out of my shul. I have no job, no money, no friends. And the DA is going after me. All because I committed the sin of fighting for my son.”
In 2008, when Kellner reported his teenage son’s alleged molester to the authorities, he knew he would make enemies in his chasidic community, despite having secured permission to do so from rabbis. What he never expected was that one of the people turning against him would be the Brooklyn district attorney.
To hear him tell it, Kellner — whose son reported he had been touched inappropriately by a man named Baruch Lebovits — went from being a valued law enforcement resource to the subject of wrongful perjury, extortion and conspiracy charges, all because he sought redress in the criminal justice system. If convicted, he faces up to 21 years in prison.
Continue Reading At: The jewish week
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