Aharon Schrieber: What Happens When You Call the Police?

David Bashevkin:
Hello, and welcome to the 18Forty Podcast, where each month we explore a different topic balancing modern sensibilities with traditional sensitivities to give you new approaches to timeless Jewish ideas. I’m your host, David Bashevkin. And this month, we’re exploring abuse within the Jewish community. This podcast is part of a larger exploration of those big, juicy Jewish ideas, so be sure to check out 18forty.org, where you can also find videos, articles, and recommended readings.

Just a quick warning to our listeners. Because of the nature of this conversation and this subject matter, at times, very briefly, we do use some mature language. So I’m not sure where you’re listening to this, whether it’s in a carpool or on your way to work, but I wanted to make sure that I let you know that obviously the subject matter is sensitive. And at times, we use some mature language.

I have a great deal of personal trepidation approaching this subject about abuse within the Jewish community, primarily focused on clergy abuse, abuse by religious leaders within our community, and it is a very fraught and scary subject. On the one hand, if it’s not discussed properly, you’re not really doing justice to the people who have firsthand experienced these types of abuse, people who I know quite personally. Incidents that I’m not really at liberty to discuss here openly, but people who I know, and I know well who struggle and their entire lives have taken a different course because of the abuse that they dealt with. And talking about this subject in an inappropriate way, in a way that’s not really grounded, not just in experience, but in the literature and being able to talk about it in a sophisticated way, does not do justice or does not honor the experience of the people who have really suffered from this.

On the other hand, I’m not sure if it’s an option not to talk about it. It’s not an option because the very mission, the very focus of what 18Forty was established for, as we’ve said so many times is to really confront and discuss points of dissonance within our religious lives. And we’ve discussed theological dissonance, we’ve discussed emotional dissonance, when you’re not getting that sense of satisfaction, but there’s also sociological dissonance when the very framework and power within your community does not reflect the type of values that you would hope to see within it. And even with the risk and with everything that it is at stake in discussing it improperly, not discussing the way that some would’ve liked, discussing the way that other people would’ve liked, because this is a very rightfully so deeply opinionated subject in the way it should be discussed and the way it should be discussed, because that is so, it is nearly impossible to speak about in a way that is going to be bullseye perfect. But I have a very specific goal and focus in speaking about it on 18Forty.

Number one, the first goal is to talk about it. This is a point of dissonance for many, many people. How do I know this? It’s not just in the Jewish community. The scholar that has influenced my thought the most on this is somebody named Hugh Turpin, which I assume not many people have heard of, and that’s absolutely fine. He wrote his PhD, which later became a book called Unholy Catholic Ireland, which is about religious hypocrisy, secular morality, and Irish ex-Catholicism. Essentially, what his book talks about is the larger effect that the way that the Irish community dealt with the scandal of the Catholic church, and how it affected people’s religiosity. The reason why he was so instrumental and had such a great effect on myself, and I’ll talk about that in a moment, is because more than just focusing on exclusively the primary victims, he really focused on what’s known as secondary victims.

What does it mean to have a secondary victim? What does it mean to be a primary victim? A primary victim is somebody who was directly affected – the subject of abuse. Secondary victims is a much broader demographic. It may include their families. But in a broader sense, it really includes all of us. It includes adherence to a particular religious denomination, whether it’s a church or a synagogue or a school who have had their faith irrevocably changed because of the way they saw either the crisis itself, the scandal itself, the abuse itself, or the way that the aftermath, the crisis was handled. And a secondary victim may find themselves asking, why should I trust in anything ever again? Why should I have faith in this system of faith if I’ve been disappointed, if I’ve witnessed this disappointment over and over again?

And while his focus is primarily on the Catholic church and countries which by and large have been affiliated with the Catholic church and the aftermath of secularization that has happened, my own studies and my own PhD, which I completed in December of this very year, focuses on this question within the Jewish community. Namely, how do religious organizations, religious systems, religious faith structures restore faith following a crisis involving religious leadership?

I came to this question from a very personal place. And I discussed this, though I don’t discuss it in depth and I don’t plan on doing that here, but there’s a rabbi I knew in my own life who I looked up to for a very, very long time, who due to his behavior was removed from the position that he served, and is no longer functioning as a rabbi. And I remember witnessing this and I was already older, I was in my early 20s, but I remember thinking about previous ideas that I had heard from this very rabbi. I remember hearing about previous ideas of inspiration and growth, and there’s a deep cynicism that can seep into you, that I felt sleeping into myself kind of being witnessed to such hypocrisy.

Underlying Hugh Turpin’s theory of secularization is that what reinforces religious behavior is when we see people sacrifice and make great sacrifice on behalf of religious life and religious beliefs. And there is something deeply inspiring and uplifting when we see people lead lives of holiness and greatness, even at great expense to themselves in order to serve a higher truth. And what his theory basically underlies is that the inverse is also true, what he calls a credibility undermining display. When the credibility of our religious leaders is undermined, when we see something that is hypocritical, it creates a deep-seated cynicism, not just in the primary victims, God forbid, who are subject to the abuse, but to the community that witnessed this.

And given the society that we live in today with social media and with reporting, we are all exposed to so much, which doesn’t mean to blame the messenger. That doesn’t mean that we are, God forbid, advocating that we shouldn’t report on this, we shouldn’t talk about it. It just means that we need to highlight the effect that this can have on our very religious souls, on our ability to have trust in trust itself, to have faith in faith itself. When you’re exposed to so much to people behaving in a certain way and the way that it could sometimes be reinforced by the very community that they serve, it can have a cynical, corrosive effect on our very souls. And that’s not blaming the effect because I am a victim of that as well.

I did become cynical. I still remain, in many ways, cynical, but I refuse to live in a world, I refuse to operate in a world where trust and faith itself cannot be apprehended, cannot be grasped. I refuse to live in a world where anybody who has any sense of religious piety must be suspected of being some terrible, nefarious, malicious creature behind closed doors. I don’t want to live in such a world. And that’s why we’re talking about this. Because if you’re able to talk about it, if you’re able to give an educational approach for how to deal with these issues, you don’t have to live in such a world. You know how to operate, you know what to do, you know what signs to look at, you know what intuition to trust. And the more educational reinforcement we have around the subject, the more we’re able to talk about it.

And not just talk about it in specific, whether it’s blogs or websites or podcasts that deal exclusively with this subject. But the more we’re able to talk about it in the open and talk about our intuitions and our trust and our boundaries and the way that we look at religious leadership, the way we look at communal leadership in a healthy way, and still be able to grasp and hold onto that faith in religious faith, that faith in religious leadership, I think as a community, we will be healthier. When conversations like this only take place behind very closed doors, in whispers, that doesn’t serve the educational and I think elevated purpose of these conversations itself, which is why I thought on 18Forty, given the fact that there’s so much religious dissonance that can occur from the very witnessing, the very just hearing of these events and what it does for your soul, I thought it was an important subject to speak about here. And I’ve been exposed to a lot of ugly things in this world.

I operate in the Jewish world by and large, and I refuse to look away. I look directly into the ugliness because I want to see it, I want to understand it. Because A, it helps me have language to talk about what’s ugly and allow myself to still have language to discuss and elevate what is pure and holy. And I think if you don’t talk about it in a deliberate focused and careful way, your language can get mixed over where anybody who’s a rabbi, anybody who has any sense of holiness, you are not able to have that sense of reverence, where the very notion of reverence itself is lost. And I think both can be held together. I think we can look directly into the ugliness, we can look directly into the educational frameworks that we need to protect ourselves and our communities from this type of abuse, but we don’t have to allow it to erode into a type of broadened course cynicism that undermines our very capacity to feel and experience holiness in ourselves, in our community, and in our religious leaders.

So that is why I’m not excited, but I think it’s important to have this conversation. And I wanted to actually begin this conversation in a very strange place. We’re not going to be talking about any specific incidents of abuse. And that also is very deliberate. I noticed in many ways, the conversation that took place in Hollywood surrounding Harvey Weinstein, where when the monster becomes so specific, when all of the ugliness begins to be associated with one specific individual, it can obscure our focus from the enduring ugliness that can creep up in any society and in any community. And when all of the focus turns to one person and one incidence, it can obscure our ability to realize that we’re still trapped in the room with many monsters, many future monsters, and much enduring ugliness. And for us to just point in one direction and say, “Ah! We solved it, Harvey Weinstein.” And pat ourselves on the back and wipe our hands clean and say, “The monster is no longer here,” is not the right way to approach these issues.

We need to understand the very underpinnings that allow these things to emerge. We need to educate ourselves about how to react, God forbid, if we hear of such incidents and events. And finally, we need to know the difference between different forms and sources of power, which is what we’re going to be talking about today.

The title of this podcast is pretty direct, What Happens When You Call the Police? I thought about including more halachic discourse about whether or not one is supposed to call the police if they are witness, if they are subject to abuse. I decided against that, not because, and I want to make this very clear, the only misconception that I don’t want to have is that I am a halachic authority in any sense of the word, I am not, and you should not rely on me. However, it is my understanding from my teachers, that if somebody becomes aware of an incident of abuse, you go directly to the police.

The analogy that I heard directly from a renowned halachic authority, who I’m not going to name, because I don’t have his permission, but it’s the way that I operate. If, God forbid, somebody is on your lawn with an AK-47, spraying bullets into your living room window, you would not call your Rav before calling 911. An incidents of abuse within our community are exactly the same. There is somebody on our lawn spraying bullets from an AK-47 into our window. Now, these bullets do not kill in the same way that a bullet from a gun does, but the broad effects that such incidents have on our wider community, the actual, not only deaths, but physical damage, emotional damage, the enduring damage that it has, the analogy is clear. But I still think and as much as we say this, if we’re honest and I’ll be honest, I’ll talk for myself for a moment, we still have trouble calling the police. I still see this in all sorts of communities. I’m not pointing to any one community. I don’t think it’s in any one community.

I think we still have trouble calling the police because it is more comfortable, it is more natural, it is more familiar to call people that we know when we know of such incidents, rather than getting the police involved. Maybe that has to do with historic feelings that the Jewish community has with state authority. Maybe that has to do with the very serious halachic weight, which the issue of mesira, which means handing somebody over to the police authorities have been dealt with historically, particularly when we were under unjust governments, it had an unjust judicial system. Maybe it has to do with the very fact that I don’t know who my local police officer is, and I know who my Rav is, and it’s more familiar and comfortable.

And it’s because of that, that I want to almost make the process of what happens when you call the police a little bit more understandable. This is a very educational series. And the questions that I’m talking about are really just trying to demystify the very notion of what happens when you call the police. And that is why I am so excited, and I am excited, not because of the subject matter, but because of our guest, is a friend that goes way, way back, who I know from working. He’s somebody who has enlightened me to the world. He used to work on events that I used to run and manage, and he would really like schlep chairs, he would move chairs around.

He was part of the tech and operation staff and I remember late at night, we would have conversations about philosophy and economics. And after the first time that he worked for me, maybe the second time he worked for me, and you know the way that the person schlepping the chairs is not always seen as the most intellectual, the most sharpest person in the room, but in this case, through our conversations and after our first event, he reached out to me and said, “Hey, I want to get together. Why don’t we continue this conversation?” And we got together and we discussed economic philosophy. And I realized, this is one of the most intelligent people and thoughtful people that I’ve ever had a conversation with.

And that is my dear friend, Aharon Schrieber, who is the assistant district attorney who works in the Domestic Violence Bureau. He works for the Office of the District Attorney in the Bronx County, and he really understands the process of what happens. And he also works within our community, not as an ADA, but he was raised, and the values that he lives with are from our community. Which is why I reached out to him because it’s a conversation about communal life, about the very systems and structures of power in our community that we’ve actually been having for decades. And in many ways, this conversation is a continuation of that, to understand what happens when you call the police, what is the process to demystify that first point of entry in this conversation about abuse within the Jewish community and better understand how we can be reacting when, God forbid, if God forbid, such incidents come to light for us. So it is my absolute pleasure to introduce my conversation with Aharon Schrieber.

I am so excited to speak today with somebody who I’ve known for a very, very long time, dare I call us the best of friends. We really are near and dear friends. One of the few who’s really consistently come to my house for Shabbos, along with his brother, Zack. And I mention Zack, who we love. But it is really a pleasure and privilege to introduce somebody who began… I know him since he was, I think a teenager, maybe in his early, early 20s. But somebody who I really wanted to help us understand a very specific question, which we’re going to focus on today, which is really just educational about how reporting of sexual abuse, sexual violence takes place, and to really kind of remove some of the clouds that surround this issue I know for myself and for others. It is my absolute pleasure to introduce my friend, Aharon Schrieber, who serves as the assistant district attorney in the Domestic Violence Bureau for the Bronx County DA.

Aharon, what a joy, privilege, and pleasure to welcome you today.

Aharon Schrieber:
Thanks for having me. It’s nice to be here.

David Bashevkin:
So let’s just say from the outset, does your office know that you are appearing on a Jewish podcast to talk about some pretty serious issues?

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah. Thanks for starting with that. I did have to go through a number of hurdles with my office to make sure that they were comfortable with me talking on the record about my job and some of the questions we’re going to talk about, but I want to make clear that I’m not here in my official capacity as an ADA. I am talking as myself and sharing knowledge and experiences that I’ve had as an ADA in the Bronx.

David Bashevkin:
I’m just curious, when you came to your office, did you have to ask the District Attorney of the Bronx like, is this okay?

Aharon Schrieber:
No, that doesn’t go up to her. I asked-

David Bashevkin:
It didn’t go all the way up to the top.

Aharon Schrieber:
There’s like a ethics person on staff who I sent an email to with your information and what we’re doing here, and she gave me the approval.

David Bashevkin:
Did it take a while, or she was like, “This is a good idea”?

Aharon Schrieber:
There were maybe like five or six emails exchanged. She definitely thought it was a good idea, but they just wanted to make sure that all the boxes were checked before I… For instance, you’re not paying me, I don’t think.

David Bashevkin:
We haven’t discussed that, but no, I don’t think I’m paying you.

Aharon Schrieber:
No.

David Bashevkin:
I think you are paying me with your wisdom.

Aharon Schrieber:
Oh, thanks. That’s much appreciated.

David Bashevkin:
And maybe this is me calling in a favor. We talk about this all the time and before… Because our listeners, I assume don’t know the ins and outs of A, the District Attorney in the Bronx. Let’s start with just your credentials aside from being my friend. I don’t get your advice particularly regarding dealing with sexual abuse from just anybody that I am friends with. That’s a bad idea. So what are your actual credentials? Where were you educated?

Aharon Schrieber:
Sure. So I went to Hunter College and then to NYU for law school. I spent the first summer in law school working at an organization called Safe Horizon in the Domestic Violence Law Project, where we, on the civil side of things, helped women in Brooklyn primarily deal with issues of child custody and divorce and abuse in the civil court.

I spent my second summer at a law firm, which I did not very much enjoy, but it was a good experience because it taught me that I really did want to go into public service. And then after that, I applied to work at the District Attorney’s office throughout New York City, and I ended up in the Bronx where I’ve been there for about three and a half years now in the Domestic Violence Bureau.

David Bashevkin:
And it’s really incredible work that you’re doing. It’s interesting for those who know you and your brother, which I assume most of our listeners do not, but you can really tell the difference just from your haircuts, the difference between which of you is working in corporate big law and which of you is working in public service. You probably go into your haircut parlor and you’re like, “Barber, give me the public service DA.” Is that how you request your haircuts or not really?

Aharon Schrieber:
I actually asked for the 1960s hippie haircut, and they gave me this one.

David Bashevkin:
And they delivered on that.

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah.

David Bashevkin:
So why on earth… Just to understand the path for this. Meaning you got a law degree from NYU, you could have worked in big law. I assume you’re really bright. You’re a super smart guy.

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah, I had that opportunity.

David Bashevkin:
Yeah. Why did you choose public service? What drew you to this? There’s a massive salary disparity, I assume. You’re not drawn to this for the money. What drew you to this?

Aharon Schrieber:
Sure. So I have two answers for that. When they actually asked me this during my interview, and I remember that I talked about there being something innate in me that wanted to do it. It’s hard to define the same way that anybody who gives up on something more lucrative. It’s driven mostly by passion for community service and public service. I’ve always found there to be a certain joy in helping people and dedicating my time to helping others. But there’s that indefinable quality about whatever God gave me that wanted to do this, is just why I get up every day and deal with the issues that I’m dealing with at work.

David Bashevkin:
So let’s cut straight to the chase, and I’m going to pose one basic question that I want to understand. And it really comes from a theory of mine. The basic question, and then I’ll explain why I think this is the most important question just for our education as a community, is what happens when you call the police? What happens when you call the police? And the reason why I think this is such an important question is that regardless of what community you are coming from, there’s a scariness of inviting people who you don’t know, strangers into your life when you’re going through your most vulnerable, traumatic moments.

It’s much easier to reach out to a Rebbe, a rabbi, a friend, a mentor. And it’s really scary to call the police when you’ve been the victim of a crime of sexual abuse, whether that is rape or molestation or domestic violence. There’s something very scary about getting the police involved. And there are a lot of misconceptions that I think sometimes get obscured because of the more general halachic, like the legal questions in Jewish law. Is it okay to call the police? Is it not okay?

I’m going to almost take it for granted that we do call the police if you have been subject to a violent crime, or somebody who is in your immediate family has been subject to a violent crime, sexual crime, the police need to be involved. And what I want to understand and demystify is what exactly happens when you call the police. And I really want to go through this step by step. I am not a lawyer. So I’m going to be asking so many just like dumb, obvious questions that I want you to help clarify. And maybe you could take us at the beginning. God forbid, somebody becomes aware of a serious crime involving sexual abuse.

Now again, your expertise and your most of what you do is in domestic violence. How would you describe the relationship between domestic violence and sexual abuse? Are they separate bureaus?

Aharon Schrieber:
Sure. So in the Bronx, and it’s different depending upon your jurisdiction, even in New York City, the different boroughs have their own divisions, and then certainly across the country. But in the Bronx, the way it is that we have a Special Victims Division. And then within that division, there are two branches, one is the Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Bureau, and the other is the Domestic Violence Bureau.

In the Child Abuse and Sex Crimes, that’s where you’re dealing with all cases involving minors and also cases involving sex abuse between strangers, or people who are not intimate or romantic partners. In the Domestic Violence Bureau, we’re dealing with all crime involving intimate partners. So it’s called domestic violence, but it’s really more expansive than people that are living together. It involves people who have children together, but are no longer married. It involves people who are just dating. It involves former boyfriends and girlfriends or divorced people.

David Bashevkin:
Let me just ask you, God forbid, and I hate to, like… We’re talking about your professional life. I don’t know like-

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah, no, hit me.

David Bashevkin:
Do you find yourself saying like chas v’shalom and God forbid a lot in your work? I feel like in all my questions, like chas v’shalom, like…

Aharon Schrieber:
I say God forbid certainly every day and probably multiple times a day. I remember exactly when I said it today. Yeah, I mean, I say it all the time, and even other people say it, not just because I’m the only guy in the office wearing a yarmulke. A lot of people use language like that because it is such a delicate position that we’re dealing with that, I don’t know, maybe it helps to invoke a higher power for help sometimes.

David Bashevkin:
Yeah. I appreciate that. So what I was going to ask you, God forbid, if there is a rape between a relative and like let’s say an uncle and a niece, but the niece is not a minor. Does that go to the sex crimes or does that go to the domestic violence?

Aharon Schrieber:
So that would probably go to the Sex Crimes Bureau because we’re really dealing with people that are romantic partners.

David Bashevkin:
Gotcha.

Aharon Schrieber:
Which I would imagine under that circumstance, they would not have been carrying on a romantic partnership, independent of whatever sex abuse act happens.

David Bashevkin:
Gotcha. So let’s start at the very beginning. Somebody becomes aware of a crime that either happened to them or somebody they know, do you call 911? Do you email somebody? Do I have to figure out, well, what county am I in? Do I have to find out the Bronx county? What’s the first thing that you should be doing?

Aharon Schrieber:
So just to answer the question about who do you call. So if you call 911, you don’t need to know which jurisdiction you’re in, which county you’re in. That call is going to go directly to whatever operator is… It’s going to happen automatically. So you don’t need to worry about Googling which number to call if you call 911. But there is a difference between crimes that have just taken place or are currently taking place versus crimes that might have happened sometime in the past.

So if a crime is happening in that moment or has just happened, it’s easier to call 911, because there are things for the police to do, investigatory on scene, or perhaps even come during the commission of the crime and stop it and arrest the person that’s committing the crime. If something that’s happened weeks in the past or months in the past, you can go down to your local precinct. You don’t need to call 911. You can just go directly to the precinct and explain to them that a crime has happened to you, and that you’d like to make a report.

David Bashevkin:
You don’t need an appointment for that, you walk up to a desk in your local precinct and say, “I want to report a crime”?

Aharon Schrieber:
Yes. Especially in New York City, which is where my experience is, if you walk down to the precinct and you say that I’m a victim of a crime, they will have a detective or an officer sit with you and fill out the paperwork, take the initial investigatory steps and get the process started of doing the investigation.

David Bashevkin:
I assume that, that’s much scarier to walk into a precinct. When you walk into a precinct, I’m just curious, in your experience, what percent of your reports are coming from walk-ins?

Aharon Schrieber:
I would say it’s maybe 20% or so, approximately or so.

David Bashevkin:
If you called 911 about a past crime from several weeks or months ago, are they going to tell you to walk into the precinct and do it this way?

Aharon Schrieber:
No. They will send an officer to your home. At least in the Bronx, they will. I don’t want to speak for Chicago or whatever, but they will send an officer to your home. But if they know that the event took place a long time ago, it won’t come as immediately because they know it’s not an ongoing emergency. So it might take longer than if you call up and you say there’s a man or a woman in my home that’s threatening me. They will send somebody, a top priority to come by.

David Bashevkin:
Gotcha. And this might take a little bit longer.

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah.

David Bashevkin:
So you walk in and you’re going to file a report. What are the basic information that a report begins with? What happens to you?

Aharon Schrieber:
They will ask you questions about how do you know this person? Well, first, they’ll ask you about who you are. They’re going to want to take your contact information, so that way they know how to contact you. Then they’re going to ask you about what happened to you. They’re going to ask you follow up questions and ever increasing more detail so they can determine or get an expansive understanding of the story.

David Bashevkin:
And who’s asking these questions? It’s the police officer, it’s the person who-

Aharon Schrieber:
So it depends on the crime. If you are walking down the street and somebody punches you, a patrol officer is going to come. You know, somebody with the navy uniform with the sirens and all that. They’re going to come down and take that information. If you’re in the precinct and you say, “I’m the victim of a domestic violence crime,” there are domestic violence officers trained to talk to you. If you’re the victim of a sex crime, there are trained detectives or other officers that will talk to you about those issues. So depends on the crime exactly who’s going to end up talking to you. These things are fluid, obviously, depending upon how much crime there happens to be during that day and who’s available. But generally speaking, in these kinds of more sensitive crimes, there are people who are trained and experienced, who know exactly how to talk and what to ask and what details they need to get their investigation started.

David Bashevkin:
So let’s pause for a second and talk about the training. What exactly did your training include? Again, are you in the picture yet? At this point, I’m coming in, I either walk in or I call 911, I say a crime has happened, and now I’m talking to an officer, who’s either the blue uniform or what do you guys call them? Do they have like a name, like officers in blue?

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah, police officer, patrol officers.

David Bashevkin:
Patrol officer.

Aharon Schrieber:
Boys in blue.

David Bashevkin:
Or boys in blue, or a detective.

Aharon Schrieber:
Right.

David Bashevkin:
At what point are you getting involved? You are an ADA, which is an acronym for an assistant district attorney. Where are you in all this? You’re in the back room, you’re smoking a cigarette underneath one of those lights like doing the…

Aharon Schrieber:
So actually this is where Law and Order can be very helpful in understanding the process, because there are these two groups that are part of the law enforcement criminal justice here.

David Bashevkin:
And let me just say, it’s not just Law and Order, you’re specifically in Law and Order: SVU.

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah. I mean, that is the closest approximation, but that’s also far more dramatic than real life.

David Bashevkin:
So tell me why is it helpful?

Aharon Schrieber:
So it’s helpful in understanding what these two equally separately important groups or whatever it is. So the police do all the upfront investigatory work generally. When you go down to the precinct, you’re not talking to an assistant district attorney, you’re talking to a police officer or a detective, somebody from the police department. Those officers conduct the investigation and determine whether there’s enough probable cause to make an arrest on an accused person. Only following an arrest, generally speaking, is then the case passed off to an assistant district attorney to prosecute the case in the courtroom then.

I say, generally speaking, because in the special victims world, sometimes ADAs are brought in a little bit earlier to help with the process because what we don’t want are for survivors to have to repeat their story dozens of times to different strangers. So we’d rather have people come in earlier to help with the investigation that the police department usually conducts, so that way the survivor is familiar with the person who’s ultimately going to be prosecuting the case.

So in our world, a lot of times we do combined rape investigations, and I know that in the child abuse division, those ADAs are brought in very early on in order to help with interviewing the child and speaking with them. So that way they get a familiarity up front with the ADA.

David Bashevkin:
So let’s just go back. You mentioned something about training, like law school, we’ve spoke a lot about law school. I feel like I have an understanding of what happens in law school, and law school definitely helps you think through these things. Who taught you to interview with, again, I’m throwing another word, God forbid, a survivor of domestic violence? And how do they train you to do that? What do they tell you to look out for?

Aharon Schrieber:
So the answer to your question of who trained me, the answer is a lot of it was on the job training, but you’re starting off with cases where the vulnerability of the survivor is far less traumatic. So when you’re talking to somebody about how their boyfriend stole a cell phone, it’s a little easier to sort of learn how to talk to somebody about than more sensitive issues because you’re building your skillset.

David Bashevkin:
Oh, they deliberately do that? They start you off on cases that are a little bit more manageable?

Aharon Schrieber:
Yes, exactly. So when you begin in this bureau, you’re given cases that are, let’s just say easier to deal with so you can build up a skillset.

David Bashevkin:
Gotcha. Meaning it’s a crime, but a boyfriend who steals a cell phone doesn’t require the same emotional dexterity.

Aharon Schrieber:
Right. It’s far less taxing. And if you say something that’s a little blunter or with a little less sensitivity, you’re not going to really damage somebody’s emotions as much. There’s a lot of shadowing of more senior ADAs who really know what they are doing, and not just know what to ask, but also how to ask these questions. Because you’re dealing with talking about the worst day of somebody’s life, and it’s very important that you ask these sensitive questions in ways that are empowering.

There are trainings that people go to about trauma-informed interviewing, so that way you are understanding of what people have gone through, and you’re not just asking these like checklist questions of, “I need to know this. I need to know that,” but you’re asking questions in a way that’s building a relationship while you’re getting all the information that you need.

David Bashevkin:
Have you participated in those?

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah, we’ve done a number of trainings. Our bureau does a lot of in-house trainings. There are out of bureau trainings that we are encouraged to attend as well. I attended a cybercrimes training to deal with issues involving like revenge porn, where people post things online as a way of either blackmailing or embarrassing their former partners or their current partners even.

David Bashevkin:
So let’s go back to kind of the sequence of event, and let’s talk about the kinds of questions, especially with domestic violence or with a sex crime that takes place with people who are familiar with each other. A lot of times to the outside public, it’s just like he said, she said. It’s just, there are two people, they each have their story, and I guess there are people who are speculating, “Oh, he seemed like a good guy.” The reaction a lot of times when you hear somebody get accused of a crime is, “I always suspect this. I always knew it was coming.” Or on the flip side of, “It could never be such and such a person. I could never imagine it.” So what questions and evidence are you able to marshal that you are more informed than your average Joe on the street in figuring out if a crime actually took place?

Aharon Schrieber:
Right. So I guess the best way to do this is kind of walk you through my process then when a case is given to me. I guess I’ll also pick up from where we left off before about when the police do their investigation. Once they have probable cause, it’s a legal bar that’s somewhat hard to define. But once they have the probable cause to make an arrest and they do so, then the case is passed off to the District Attorney’s office to prosecute the case in the criminal court.

David Bashevkin:
Do you have any say in determining whether or not the bar of probable cause has been reached?

Aharon Schrieber:
We generally stay away from that. That’s an independent question for the police department to determine.

David Bashevkin:
Okay.

Aharon Schrieber:
The accused person or defendant is then brought… They’re arrested, they’re brought to the courthouse for an arraignment, which is when the charges that they are being filed against them are… they’re informed of that, and then the judge has the opportunity to either set bail or release the person on their own before trial. Now, the decision on who to charge, that’s when the District Attorney’s office comes in.

Initially speaking, we talk to the officers and the victim about what happened and get the general story of a narrative of what took place. You also need to corroborate that. And that’s what you’re talking about when you’re asking, oh, so this person is a community member and say, “Oh, it never could have been this person.” How do we know that this person really did that? It’s a difficult question because when things happened behind closed doors and nobody saw it, you don’t know. How do you piece together what happened in those shadows? You’re looking for photos. You are looking at any medical records, which could include a rape kit. You’re looking at potentially text messages that were exchanged that might indicate what happened.

David Bashevkin:
So you take their phone and you go through it?

Aharon Schrieber:
Sure. We sometimes look at victim’s phones if they are comfortable with that, so we can see what text messages that they’ve shared. There are often people in the home who have heard something. Certainly in apartment building, sometimes there are people who have heard stuff on the other side of the wall.

David Bashevkin:
And you’ll knock on doors cold?

Aharon Schrieber:
So not me, but the detectives will do that as they are looking for more and more evidence.

David Bashevkin:
It’s a term I’ve heard used a lot. Explain to me what a rape kit is.

Aharon Schrieber:
Sure. So a rape kit is, it’s like a medical investigatory kit that the doctors will swab various sexual areas for DNA evidence. The rape kit won’t show you that a rape happened. What a rape kit will show you… Well, actually, let me rephrase that. A rape kit will not show you whether consent was given or not. What the rape kit will show you and the medical records accompanying it will show you is whether there is DNA of a male on a woman’s body. How much language can I use here? Are you cool with this? It’ll show if semen is inside the vagina or around the vagina or on underwear that was worn, and it will show you if there was signs of violent sex, tearing, bleeding, bruising in those areas.

Now, it does not tell you that consent wasn’t given. Just because there is DNA, it doesn’t mean… There’s going to be DNA on consensual sex as well, but it will provide you all of the evidence about whether sex actually took place or potentially whether violence sex took place.

David Bashevkin:
Mm-hmm. Now, it seems almost inconceivable that no one wants to prepare, God forbid, of what they would do if they were in this situation. And you know, in every community, there are examples that people overhear this and that. What advice do you give somebody if they were subject to a crime that took place behind closed doors, there’s no video camera? What should they be gathering in the immediate aftermath to make sure that their ability to prove and to make sure that this perpetrator’s behind bars? The moment that they hear of this crime or were party to this crime, they were the victim of such a crime, what’s your quick checklist, like make sure you have X, Y, and Z at this stage?

Aharon Schrieber:
So if you are the victim of a rape… And I want to preface this by saying that when you are a victim of a sexual assault, you’re not going to be thinking, “I need to preserve all this evidence.”

David Bashevkin:
For sure not. Yeah.

Aharon Schrieber:
And so I always feel uncomfortable saying, “Well, these are the things that you should do.” Because there’s nothing that you should do other than just make sure that you’re safe and that you have a safe place to go, and that your physical wellbeing and your emotional wellbeing are taken care of. It is hard as a man to imagine, and I know that men are victims of sexual abuse as well, but it’s hard to imagine how terrible that is. But the things that can be done to preserve evidence, if you have the wherewithal to think of it at the time, is to go to the hospital and make sure that a professional, medical professional has examined your body.

David Bashevkin:
Because the rape kit is administered by the hospital?

Aharon Schrieber:
Yes. Your body is the evidence.

David Bashevkin:
You have to request that when you go to the hospital, do you know?

Aharon Schrieber:
I am not a hundred percent sure if you have to request it or that it will be done automatically, because I have not been to the hospital when a rape kit has been administered. But if you request it, it will certainly be done.

David Bashevkin:
Okay.

Aharon Schrieber:
Taking photos of your body and telling somebody what happened. There’s a longstanding law of evidence in American jurisprudence called hearsay. We all know the hearsay rule.

David Bashevkin:
Hearsay is that I can’t introduce to court something that I heard somebody else tell me, because that’s hearsay, that’s like, I didn’t hear it directly, I heard somebody else tell me the facts?

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah. And without getting into too deep of why hearsay isn’t acceptable, it’s just generally not accepted as evidence. But there are exceptions to that, and one of those things in New York is called an outcry witness, that when a survivor of sexual abuse tells somebody what happened to them, that person can be used as corroborating evidence of the act because they are the first person to have heard it. And we assume that, or not assume, we know that generally speaking, these acts are not made up, and that when somebody tells somebody else about it, they are speaking the truth.

David Bashevkin:
This is why I specifically wanted to talk about this now, and not in reaction to any specific case, because I always feel like the more education you’re able to put out there again, hopefully, we never need this, but nothing will prepare someone for the trauma of what we’re discussing. But I feel like going through the steps and thinking about what is needed with your exact… And that was so moving what you said before of the main thing is to make sure that you are safe physically, emotionally, but to be able to have this discussion, not in reaction to a specific crime, but almost laying the groundwork for our listeners to think about, well, God forbid, no one plans for this, but to just have a basic educational framework of what’s needed to ensure that the criminal justice system can actually operate in the way that it’s meant to operate is something I’ve always not just been curious about, but I’ve always wanted more of this. Just take me through the steps.

Now, when you go through a rape kit, are you reviewing that, or it’s like a binary yes or no, like there was DNA, there was not DNA?

Aharon Schrieber:
The rape kit, it’s a very lengthy medical report. Most of which is charts and graphs, information that I don’t quite… Involving alleles and all these different scientific terms.

David Bashevkin:
Alleles? What’s that word you just used?

Aharon Schrieber:
I think that’s part of DNA. I don’t know if you have like a biology textbook that we can check.

David Bashevkin:
I’m so embarrassed. Okay. I feel like I’m going to get a lot of letters from our listeners, “You don’t know what alleles are?”

Aharon Schrieber:
I think that there are like four strands in DNA, and alleles are… It’s that-

David Bashevkin:
Yeah, I know those.

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah.

David Bashevkin:
The T…

Aharon Schrieber:
Maybe this gets cut from the episode.

David Bashevkin:
No, no, no. Okay. We’ll keep going.

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah.

David Bashevkin:
So take us-

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah. So to answer your question. There will be in the rape kit report that comes back after it’s examined by the folks who do all this work, it will basically tell you whether the DNA of the accused person is a match for the person from the DNA found on the survivor’s body.

David Bashevkin:
Gotcha. So there’s kind of like a binary.

Aharon Schrieber:
It’s kind of like a binary.

David Bashevkin:
Gotcha.

Aharon Schrieber:
It’s not always exact, but it’s generally a binary.

David Bashevkin:
Now, take me back to the arraignment. And my first question is, you know, you have a specific suspect in mind, there’s probable cause, he’s being arrested and he may get released on bail. What steps are taken? Meaning, your introduction, which was again, so powerful. The main thing is to make sure that this person is safe physically and emotionally. I just reported a crime, God forbid, and there’s a chance that this person will be set on bail. Isn’t the number one concern that this perpetrator can now attack the victim again, particularly in domestic violence?

Aharon Schrieber:
Right.

David Bashevkin:
What do you do to prevent that?

Aharon Schrieber:
Sure. So in New York State, the law is generally that holding somebody pretrial is only if you’re concerned that they are not going to appear for their court dates. Meaning we assume that a person has a right to be at liberty until they have been convicted of the crime, and therefore we cannot hold them unless we don’t believe that they’re going to come back for some reason for their court dates. And then there was criminal justice reform passed in 2020 that limited the number of crimes even that were eligible for that evaluation.

David Bashevkin:
Mm-hmm.

Aharon Schrieber:
Sex crimes are included in that, violent felonies are included in that. Misdemeanor assaults were no longer included in that.

David Bashevkin:
But even that bar to me sounds pretty low. Meaning most people will say, “Sure, I’ll come back for a court date.” I may, God forbid, in the interim, like isn’t the victim now terrified? They just singled out this person. What steps can be taken, if any, to protect the victim?

Aharon Schrieber:
Right. So the first thing is that an order of protection is issued by the court. Now, an order of protection is a court order that mandates that a person or the accused person cannot be within a… They have to stay away from the survivor, from the victim. They can’t communicate with them by phone, social media, text message. They can’t go back to the home. And so it’s designed to make sure that before they are even close enough where another crime could be committed, a survivor can call the police and say, “Hey, he’s at my door.”

David Bashevkin:
And what happens if that’s violated?

Aharon Schrieber:
That’s a crime. That alone is a crime.

David Bashevkin:
Okay. And that could put this person…

Aharon Schrieber:
Back in jail.

David Bashevkin:
Gotcha.

Aharon Schrieber:
Yes. And courts, because this is a court order that they are violating, courts take that very seriously then as being indicative of whether somebody will follow the next court order of returning to court.

David Bashevkin:
Gotcha.

Aharon Schrieber:
So if they are not willing to listen to the stay away from the victim order, they might not show up for their court date. And so that tacks on the calculus for whether somebody should be held in on bail.

David Bashevkin:
Okay.

Aharon Schrieber:
So that’s the first thing that the court issues, and that’s what the court does to try to make sure that a defendant is going to not commit another crime. But in terms of protecting victims, there are domestic violence officers that can do home visits and house checks. So they are on a list that helps them… You know, they are reminded this address, they need to go here more often, do home checks on them. And also we try to get people into shelters or safe places where the defendant won’t know where they are now, and therefore they can’t access them anymore.

David Bashevkin:
I’m just curious, because you use both terms. I’ve been using victim, you use the word survivor. In the office generally, how do you describe someone who has reported a crime involving sexual abuse?

Aharon Schrieber:
So we actually generally use the term complaining witness, which is a technical term.

David Bashevkin:
It’s much more neutral.

Aharon Schrieber:
It is very neutral. And in some ways, it is sort of-

David Bashevkin:
Deliberately neutralized.

Aharon Schrieber:
Yes. Because the job of the District Attorney’s office is to prosecute these crimes with sort of, I don’t want to say an impersonalness to it.

David Bashevkin:
But an objectivity.

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah, an objectivity. That’s the word I’m looking for. And so they are called complaining witnesses because legally that is what they are. But I’m using the term survivor here because I think it’s important as someone who is maybe the first time anybody… Somebody listening, this might be the first time they ever heard somebody who works in law enforcement or is listening to an ADA that they should know that I’m using the word survivor, because that is what they are, and they should know that they’re cared about.

David Bashevkin:
So let’s talk, and I’m curious about some of the court proceedings and maybe whatever you’re able to share about your own experiences. I want to talk about kind of two communal conceptions that I’ve heard, about these kind of accusations and particularly the involvement of police. And I think the main concern is two ways. Number one, there’s this concern of you’re going to ruin this person’s life, and we’re not talking about the victim. I’m talking about communal conceptions, not my own, but who says that this person isn’t making the whole thing up and you’re now going to bring a whole case against this person and totally ruin their reputation.

And on the flip side, even just today, I was talking to somebody about the importance of calling police and police involvement in these things, which again, we’ll expand more about that. But sometimes the police mess up too, and sometimes a real crime has committed, but the bar for being able to prosecute, the bar for being able to prove is so high that they’re not going to be able to do anything because you don’t have enough evidence in this case. So how do you think about these two things? What do you respond to somebody when they say, you’re going to lock up an innocent man or woman, or on the flip side, the bar for being able to prove a crime is taking this so high that you’re going to miss a lot of real crimes where people are walking out on the street.

Aharon Schrieber:
Sure. So let me answer the question first about putting an innocent man in jail and having them convicted of a crime. That’s everybody’s worst nightmare. Nobody wants to be the one who has their conviction overturned because it means that we’ve stolen years of somebody’s life away. And there have been a lot of court systems throughout our civilizations, even the Torah has one, Gemara has ones that they’ve set up. In America, we have a pretty high bar to convict somebody beyond a reasonable doubt. There’s some doubt, but it’s beyond a reasonable doubt. And proving that in a courthouse is not easy, especially in these kinds of cases where there aren’t impartial eyewitnesses to see it. Meaning the person who is your main witness is the person who is the victim. And there’s always defense attorneys trying to poke holes in the story, discredit them. Sorry, I’m sort of meandering.

The best way to think about is that the system is strong enough generally speaking, and there are horrible cases. Cardozo actually has a really good Innocence Project, where they try to overturn cases that have been-

David Bashevkin:
Sure.

Aharon Schrieber:
And if you listen to the Serial Podcast that was like the home run in thinking about convicting innocent people.

David Bashevkin:
What was the name who started the Innocence Project? He worked in the OJ trial. He was the one who did all the DNA.

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah. I can’t remember. DNA evidence has actually been really good in overturning a lot of old cases where there was DNA collected, they didn’t know how to test it or things like that. So that DNA has been a godsend in making sure that justice is done on cases. But the general answer to your question is that we take it very seriously. We look for corroborating evidence. Trust, but verify is something that is on everybody’s mind.

David Bashevkin:
Say that again, trust…

Aharon Schrieber:
Trust, but verify. So you take a victim at their word that this is what happened to them and that their testimony alone is evidence in a courtroom. People always say, “Oh, there’s no evidence. It’s just what she said.” Well, what she said is evidence itself. But you have to have corroborating evidence as well in order to really hit that high bar on these serious felony cases about what happened.

David Bashevkin:
Well, let’s talk a little bit about trust. There was a case that was later made into a Netflix series, but it was a Pulitzer Prize winning report that was created by ProPublica. It’s called An Unbelievable Story of Rape. And it’s the story about an 18-year-old who was attacked at knife point and the detectives involved in the story did not believe her. And this person ended up walking out. It took many, many years to finally… And the coordination of two different offices. I’m just curious, did you ever read this article?

Aharon Schrieber:
I did. Actually, I watched the show maybe like two months ago and then I read the article when I was done. I should have done it in reverse, but I took the easy way out.

David Bashevkin:
The article’s always better than the Netflix series.

Aharon Schrieber:
I don’t want to call out the Anna Delvey show, whatever that was called on Netflix. I don’t know if you watched this thing, but-

David Bashevkin:
No, I didn’t watch it, but I know what you’re talking about.

Aharon Schrieber:
This is the one time I’m really going to say an opinion, like just read the article. It’s not worth the nine hours.

David Bashevkin:
It’s not worth the nine hours. But when you read that as an ADA of that lack of trust, that this person, this young girl who’ve been through a lot and they blamed it on her tough upbringing and this and that. Is that something that you’ve witnessed or do you think… What concrete steps have been taken from what you’ve seen in the criminal justice system to ensure that kind of stuff doesn’t happen?

Aharon Schrieber:
So I have not seen that personally, where somebody is not believed, but also you have to understand that when a case has come on my desk, an arrest has already been made. And it’s important for people to remember that an arrest is not indicative of guilt, even an indictment is not necessarily indicative of guilt. It’s only a conviction at trial that shows that a person is guilty. And you see this all the time where people are arrested and they are not… not only are they not found guilty, the charges are later dropped because as the investigation goes on, either new evidence comes to light that shows the person’s innocence or the credibility of the accuser is shown to be, they’re not credible.

So there is a multi-step process here. And there are people who are arrested that are innocent, but the hope is that those are few and far between. And the real hope is that those people are not convicted at trial, either the case is dropped before that-

David Bashevkin:
Has that ever happened with you? Have you ever seen an innocent person get initially arrested and then later on, the charges dropped or-

Aharon Schrieber:
Yes, but I want to be clear about this, is that I’ve never seen a case where there was not probable cause to arrest the person. What there has been is after the probable cause was established, which is one bar, the higher bar of beyond a reasonable doubt at trial was not met, or that there was more evidence that came to light that showed that the police were not aware of at the time, that demonstrated that the accused person was not the person that we were looking for. And this is where defense attorneys are really important, because defense attorneys are the prosecutor’s chavrusas in pursuing justice. They’re our partners, they’re our adversaries, but they are ultimately the partners in justice because they are the ones that present the alternative perspective of what happened. They are the ones who care about their client’s interests and want to make sure that person, if they’re really innocent, is not going to be convicted.

And so I’ve had defense attorneys send me text messages that definitively show that something didn’t happen. I’ve had defense attorneys show me credible alibis that this person was not where we had originally thought that they were.

David Bashevkin:
That’s so interesting. I love that notion of you’re… I mean, you are adversaries, but you’re both kind of a good defense attorney and a good district attorney are really both trying to arrive at the same conclusion, namely the truth.

Aharon Schrieber:
Right. Our job is to find the truth. I mean, the mission statement of our bureau is just to prosecute the truth. I have never felt bad about dismissing a case when the evidence showed that we had the wrong person or that it didn’t happen.

David Bashevkin:
Do you personally bring cases to trial?

Aharon Schrieber:
I have not myself actually conducted a trial, but I have reached the step of we’re ready for trial, and then people take a plea offer.

David Bashevkin:
Gotcha.

Aharon Schrieber:
I’m a little jealous of the people who have done trials because I would like to do one, but a lot of times, I don’t remember the exact phrasing, but there’s an old saying that if, you know, a really good ADA will never have to try a case because you’ll pinpoint the exact offer, the exact disposition of justice that a case should have, and then they’ll just take the offer. Because they’ll see the evidence and you’ll have analyzed the case properly, and then it’ll be done because-

David Bashevkin:
It won’t even have to go to trial.

Aharon Schrieber:
Right. Because everyone will know the evidence is there, the evidence is not there. This is what the case should be pled out to, and that’ll be that.

David Bashevkin:
Gotcha. Let’s talk about some of the general cultural barriers. I mean, you really took us through this process from the initial report arraignment and then eventually you go to trial and you try to figure out that, you know, whether you can reach that sentence beyond the reasonable doubt. Tell me a little bit about the cultural interactions. I think a big concern, again, coming back to our original question, what happens when you call the police? And I think part of what’s initially scary… I’ve called the police twice because of traffic, car stuff. I was involved in a very small hit and run. I actually posed the question to Twitter. Do you remember that?

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah, I was about to say, I think I saw that on Twitter once.

David Bashevkin:
Yeah, very sweet, but clearly confused older woman sideswiped my car and just like… Clearly, she stopped. I told her, “You just hit me.” And then she drove off. I got the cops involved. It wasn’t all that traumatic. But I think one of the concerns that people have with getting the police involved are the cultural differences between the specific culture, whether it’s in the Orthodox community or any Jewish minority community.

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah.

David Bashevkin:
Being able to bridge and translate the cultural idiosyncrasies to the people involved in the case. Have you ever been involved, maybe not specifically in the Orthodox community, have you been involved in these minority communities? How do you make the leap for that cultural divide of understanding their traditions?

Aharon Schrieber:
This is one of the great joys of working in New York City, which is that it really is full of diversity and people who are at their core, just like anyone else. No matter their dress, their culture, the way they look, we’re all looking for the same stuff. And it’s been very personally satisfying to sit across a table from somebody who does not look like me or does not believe what I believe, and I’ve been able to help them.

How do you bridge that gap? You bridge it with sensitivity, with showing somebody that you care, with just being, I don’t want to rely on cliches, but when you are real with somebody and you tell them, “I care about you,” and maybe nobody’s cared about them in their whole life, maybe even their community doesn’t care about them when something horrible’s has happened to them. If you show them that they care, they will be receptive to that. But then again, I’m also talking from experience of people who have already come forward and they’re sitting across me because they are now ready to talk about what happened to them.

If you don’t trust the police, there’s a lot of reasons why people don’t, and that can depend on the community. I think the reason… Well, I don’t want to speculate. I think we can all agree-

David Bashevkin:
There are reasons different communities have mistrust of the police, some of it’s historic. I’m sure there are parts where the stories that you grow up with from generations ago, where the police of the local government were discriminatory, were against you. Many minority communities have deep distrust of police because it’s historic. Some minority communities have distrust of police because in their local community, there was an incident and recent memory that they felt disappointed. That’s a hard thing to repair, but it’s important to repair.

Aharon Schrieber:
And I don’t want to talk for any community that’s not ours, which is Modern Orthodox. I have this sense that people in our community don’t go to the police as much as they should. I think that’s something you said at the start of this, but you should know that the police care about you and the district attorneys across the country care about you, and they care about public safety, and they care about your rights and that your safe. And even if they don’t have the cultural language to be able to speak to you yet, they will build that if you come forward. The first person to come forward is going to be the person that starts building the road from our community to the police department.

You know, I work in the Bronx. It is not a heavily Jewish community. And so I’m only one of, I think just three Jews in my bureau and I believe the only yarmulke-wearing person in my whole office. But I know that in Brooklyn, it’s I think a different makeup, and I think they have a better cultural knowledge there because they work with people who live in the Hasidic or Orthodox communities there. And so every office is going to try to tailor themselves to the community that they’re serving, whether it’s literally staffing people that might understand it, or with having institutional knowledge about how to talk to people who are not like them, but New York City is not… New Yorkers know that you’re going to interact with people who aren’t like you.

David Bashevkin:
Yeah. You’re always a minority to somebody.

Aharon Schrieber:
Everyone’s a minority in New York. Yeah.

David Bashevkin:
Yeah.

Aharon Schrieber:
And so I think there’s generally an acceptance of people who are not like you and you shouldn’t be afraid to reach out to the police or the District Attorney’s office to talk because even if they don’t know about Shabbat, Yom Tov, whatever, they know that it’s a rape is a rape. It doesn’t matter who did it. An assault is an assault, whether it happens because of our own cultural, norms and maybe we have a different sense of what’s okay. But if you’re a victim, you know it’s not okay, and the law knows it’s not okay, and the ADAs know that.

David Bashevkin:
So let me ask you this. There was a fantastic distinction that you made, we’ve discussed this just from knowing each other, we talk about kind of communal landscaping, communal issues, and we’re talking about contrasting the power that a police department, a district attorney’s office can wield versus communal power. And you shared with me this notion of hard power versus soft power. I’m wondering if you could kind of highlight, what are the strengths and weaknesses of police involvement and the strength and weaknesses of kind of communal involvement? Usually people look at one or the other. And I think in our previous discussions, you kind of gave me this picture of how they really work together in very important ways.

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah. So you mentioned my brother, Zack, he’s going to be very upset because I do not remember the name of the essayist that I got this from. But hard power is generally defined by the ability to use force to enforce the law, and soft power is defined by influence to enforce, let’s say community norms. And so hard power is going to be-

David Bashevkin:
What hard powers do you wield as an ADA?

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah. So as the government, I mean, I’m an agent of the state of the government and we wield arrest power, the ability to take away somebody’s liberty, the ability to force somebody to go to programming or be monitored. But we have very strict system in place to make sure that we can only wield that power under certain circumstances. My capacity, only when a crime has been committed and then only when proving that the crime has been committed beyond a reasonable doubt in a trial, unless a guilty plea has been reached.

David Bashevkin:
You could subpoena somebody?

Aharon Schrieber:
Right. I have the power to subpoena.

David Bashevkin:
What does that mean to subpoena?

Aharon Schrieber:
A subpoena is a… it’s a document that demands that either a person come to testify in court or that an agency organization or company provide documents to our office or to the court for trial.

David Bashevkin:
And if you refuse a subpoena, what happens?

Aharon Schrieber:
Well, conceivably, you could be arrested or fined

David Bashevkin:
You can’t blow it off.

Aharon Schrieber:
You’re not supposed to blow it off, no.

David Bashevkin:
No.

Aharon Schrieber:
No. You’re not supposed to blow off a subpoena. Now, do people not testify when they are subpoenaed? Yes. Are there reasons why we might not enforce it? I don’t want to get into it, but there are reasons when sometimes we might not enforce a subpoena.

David Bashevkin:
But that’s a hard power. You can force somebody to come and talk.

Aharon Schrieber:
Yes, we have the power of force, generally speaking. That’s what governments have. That’s hard power.

David Bashevkin:
And that’s in contrast to-

Aharon Schrieber:
Soft power is the power of influence. So in our community, so rabbinic figures have, generally speaking, soft power. They can go up and give a speech and by the power of their respect, the respect that people give them, they can influence people to do certain things or to change the way that they think about certain things.

Now, we have some amount of hard power in the Jewish community. There are beis dins that can put down certain edicts, but generally speaking, the power of beis din actually comes from the ability to enforce beis din‘s decision in a civil court. Beis din can’t just send out-

David Bashevkin:
Can’t arrest somebody.

Aharon Schrieber:
Not that I know of. I don’t know. You might know more about that.

David Bashevkin:
You have to be pretty controversial to get arrested by beis din.

Aharon Schrieber:
Right. So they can’t. They can’t force somebody to…

David Bashevkin:
I’ve never been arrested by beis din. I’ve probably done enough. I’m sure there have been Jewish courts that have wanted to arrest me. That I am pretty certain of, but I’ve never… No. A Jewish court cannot arrest.

Aharon Schrieber:
Right.

David Bashevkin:
They can send out a subpoena, which is known as a hazmana, which is a edict that we want you to appear before us, but because of the competing systems in America and their informality, they’re ignored too frequently, unfortunately.

Aharon Schrieber:
And cherem, which might be the most powerful is also… People don’t want to enforce cherem.

David Bashevkin:
It’s a little dated cherem. We don’t have that universal cherem where you’re like Spinoza, I don’t know, you’re lying down in front of the shul and having people step on you.

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah. But even if you think about… Even in olden times, right? Let’s say the rest of a community was like, “Nah, we don’t care.” What’s anybody going to do?

David Bashevkin:
Well, in olden times, this is the distinction. In olden times, Jewish court system derived their power from the state.

Aharon Schrieber:
Is that how it worked in Europe?

David Bashevkin:
Different places in Europe, but you had state invested power into Jewish communals, where Jewish communities were able to tax.

Aharon Schrieber:
Oh, I didn’t know that.

David Bashevkin:
That was state power. That’s for a different discussion.

Aharon Schrieber:
No, that’s cool though, yeah.

David Bashevkin:
But I love this-

Aharon Schrieber:
It’s the series. Yeah.

David Bashevkin:
Bad idea. Any rabbinic, communal leaders listening to this-

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah, don’t get any ideas, buddy.

David Bashevkin:
I’m not going to get taxed or arrested in the near future. I mean, the taxing we’ve spoken about. I mean, that’s what makes tuition, cost of living, the things would be very-

Aharon Schrieber:
You want to do that now? We can do that too.

David Bashevkin:
A little bit of taxing. But this notion of difference between hard power and soft power, I think is so important. People miss it because I think a lot of times we accuse hard power institutions for not wielding soft power when they don’t have any. Meaning, you don’t have a community that you can, so to speak, inspire and influence, do better-

Aharon Schrieber:
I’m trying to tonight though.

David Bashevkin:
Yeah.

Aharon Schrieber:
I’m trying to wield a little soft power.

David Bashevkin:
Yeah. Do better and be better. And I think a lot of times we look at institutions of soft power, communal leaders, and we want them to wield hard power when in truth, they don’t have. They don’t have hard power.

Aharon Schrieber:
Exactly.

David Bashevkin:
And that confusion, I think leads to a lot of misconceptions, frustrations, anger, and also injustice, frankly. When you go to a soft institution for something that requires hard power, and when you go to a hard power institution that requires soft power.

Aharon Schrieber:
And also the institutions themselves not knowing their role.

David Bashevkin:
Correct.

Aharon Schrieber:
That can be a failing of our community, you know, soft power institutions, not understanding that sometimes the best way to wield that power is to say, “I am not the right person to talk to about this, and I will help you, and I will connect you with the right person to talk about this.”

David Bashevkin:
Exactly.

Aharon Schrieber:
And that’s what soft power can do. It can direct you to the hard power institutions, or it can influence a change in the way the community has imprisonment thinking about these issues.

David Bashevkin:
As somebody who wield hard power, you can subpoena, you can order an arrest. Is that what its called?

Aharon Schrieber:
No, we generally do not order arrests. The police department does that. We don’t order arrests.

David Bashevkin:
Gotcha.

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah. It’s like the Law and Order drama, like, “Oh, we’re going to go arrest them.” I suppose that can happen in certain circumstances. Like you hear about that more at the federal level, where the system is a little bit different, because you don’t have patrol cops at the federal level.

David Bashevkin:
Gotcha.

Aharon Schrieber:
No one’s manning the streets who’s like a federal agent, like walking past the bodega. That doesn’t really happen.

David Bashevkin:
But you have this hard power. What type of messages do you wish that soft power institutions… And I wish we had other words than hard and soft power because hard makes it sound more important.

Aharon Schrieber:
Right, which is not, it’s not, because a community without- like the hope is ultimately that I’m out of a job one day. Like, it’d be great if there was no crime. That would be wonderful. Soft power is always going to need to exist because a community, times change, people need different things. That’s why it’s soft, it’s more malleable. Communities have to adjust with that and you need leadership at the top that can recognize, times are changing, we need to adjust our things a little bit differently.

David Bashevkin:
What are some things you wish you heard more from soft power institutions?

Aharon Schrieber:
Oh, and I know where we’re going here. I actually thought about this in the car when I was driving over here is that… I kind of thought about this question where… You phrased it differently than I thought you were going to phrase it. But if-

David Bashevkin:
How do you think I was going to phrase it?

Aharon Schrieber:
I thought you were going to say that if I’m a communal leader and somebody tells me that my husband raped me, what should I do?

David Bashevkin:
Okay.

Aharon Schrieber:
But I think that’s basically the question you’re asking.

David Bashevkin:
Yes. I’m asking also another question. I want you to answer that question, and another one in here. What are the positive, proactive messages you wish you heard more from soft power institutions?

Aharon Schrieber:
Okay.

David Bashevkin:
Answer that first question.

Aharon Schrieber:
You should ask them if they have a safe place to go for the night and you should say that I will go with you to the police station, if you need me to. That’s what I would hope that people would do more of. You don’t have to be a rabbi. A friend, neighbor, relative. You should take them at their word.

David Bashevkin:
And the first reaction and this, you said initially, when I was asking for that checklist, the first reaction is just providing that emotional, physical, making sure that the emotional and physical safety of this person in the immediate is being met. That’s the number one priority.

Aharon Schrieber:
Right. That’s the paramount thing.

David Bashevkin:
But what do you wish you-

Aharon Schrieber:
What do I wish was heard more in our-

David Bashevkin:
Yeah, from soft power, what do you wish that they spoke about more? Here’s somebody, you see these crimes being committed, you see the difficulty or the process that it requires to prove them. What do you think is in a message that you wish was emphasized that you got to hear more of?

Aharon Schrieber:
I’ll tell you something I wish I heard less of, and it’ll lead me to telling you what I wish I heard more of, which is that anytime somebody says, “We can’t know what happened behind closed doors.” I wish that, that was not said because we actually can figure it out. Not every minute detail, not the dialogue of what happened and the exact play by play, but we can generally be on a reasonable doubt, figure out what happened behind closed doors.

David Bashevkin:
That’s your job to figure out.

Aharon Schrieber:
That is literally my job, and I see people do it every single day, and it’s difficult, and it’s emotionally taxing, but it can happen. And so that phrase shouldn’t be uttered by people.

David Bashevkin:
Okay.

Aharon Schrieber:
Just not true.

David Bashevkin:
And what do you wish you heard more of?

Aharon Schrieber:
I wish I heard more of believe victims, take them at their word.

David Bashevkin:
I like the phrase you used earlier.

Aharon Schrieber:
Trust, but verify?

David Bashevkin:
Trust, but verify.

Aharon Schrieber:
Trust, but verify. I don’t want that to be corrupted into people saying, “Oh, we trusted them, but we verified and we couldn’t figure out based on the verification.” It shouldn’t be taken as just a generalized by rote investigation, a checklist investigation. There are people who spend their entire day trying to figure out this stuff, trained professionals. So we can’t figure out what happened behind closed doors. Just to go back. What do I wish I hear more of?

David Bashevkin:
Yeah.

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah. Trust, but verify. Believe victims, but not to the point where you’ve shifted the burden now and making an accused person… We have a principle of innocent until proven guilty, but that’s a court of law principle in our communities. We should not just be saying, “Oh, it’s just an accusation.” We shouldn’t be hearing, “Oh, she came from a bad home.” Or, “She got kicked out of her high school.” I wish there was more promotion of understanding of domestic violence and sexual abuse in our communities. These are really difficult topics.

David Bashevkin:
How would you do that? It’s kind of what I’m trying to do here.

Aharon Schrieber:
Sorry, it took me a while to get to the answer. I apologize. There should be trainings, and I think there are, for schools and organizations, but shuls as community centers should have trainings for, but to look for. I’m not married, so I don’t know. But I think as part of chosson and kallah classes. It should be taught about, particularly for kallah classes, like, what is abuse? What is okay?

There are things that are not crimes, that are horrible things that happen to partners. Emotional abuse, withholding of money, withholding of time, love, making, feeling like you’re controlled. Those are all things that are not crimes. It’s hard to wield the power of the state to say, oh, you said that they couldn’t go on a vacation. That’s not a crime, but soft power can teach you how to be a better husband. I can influence you into understanding that this is not okay. Either I should not be accepting this from my partner as somebody who loves me, or I should not be doing this as somebody who is supposed to give love to somebody else.

David Bashevkin:
I love that idea. Soft power, we’re calling it that because it’s more malleable. It can kind of get into the crevices and the specificity of every, you know, the personality of each community and its norms, and has that ability. As opposed to kind of hard power, it’s a little less flexible and has to be a little bit more uniform.

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah, it should be a little more… And I mean, just today, I don’t want to get into the specifics of it, but gave a very personalized plea offer to somebody based upon the specifics of that case. And so we certainly take that into account, but there’s only so much we can do with hard power. It’s a limited set of things to utilize that force to do, and to utilize it for. Soft power, like you said, can get into the crevices and customize it for communities.

The Jewish community can self-govern itself in certain ways that other communities wouldn’t be appropriate for. But that governance can only go so far. There are things that can’t ever be tolerated by anybody in any community.

David Bashevkin:
I had a super technical question.

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah, hit me.

David Bashevkin:
This is going to be dumb. It almost reminds me… I mean, we’re recording this. This isn’t going to come out for a few weeks, but we’re recording-

Aharon Schrieber:
I know you got four more episodes of the other one to go. Intergenerational Divergence. Is that what we’re doing right now? Sorry. I’m an avid… I mean, look, I love the show. That’s why I’m so honored to be on this because I listen to your podcasts every week.

David Bashevkin:
No, we’re recording this the night after this major incident, the Oscars, where Will Smith hit Chris Rock, and I don’t know what’s going to go on by the time this comes out. But one thing that was interesting to me is that there was this question of pressing charges. And I don’t understand this. Meaning, this was televised to 12 million people. And Chris Rock said, “I don’t want to press charges.” And I’m wondering like, if I’m, if someone, the police are walking in the street, or if somebody, as clear as day, commits a crime, a rape, beats a spouse, and then the police come, it was on camera. You see a crime was committed. When do we fall back on pressing charges and when the police is just like, there was a crime committed, it doesn’t matter if the person wants to press charges or not?

Aharon Schrieber:
Sure. So-

David Bashevkin:
It’s a very dumb question.

Aharon Schrieber:
It’s not dumb. Actually, pressing charges is a phrase that I very much dislike because ultimately the state can just… it can do what it wants if it has the evidence to do it.

David Bashevkin:
Meaning, if you have evidence that a rape took place, or a spouse was battered or hurt or injured, or a murder took place, there’s no like, “Oh, we don’t want to press charges.”

Aharon Schrieber:
Right.

David Bashevkin:
Yeah. So when do we use that? Why is that phrase being used?

Aharon Schrieber:
I don’t know where it comes from, but usually when you have a crime that involves a victim, you need that person to testify to explain what took place. Even when it’s observed by other people, you might need that victim to say, “Oh, and… ” The other people can say, “We saw Chris Rock get slapped.” Only Chris Rock can say, “And it hurt.” And that’s always a necessary part of an assault is not only the act, but also the result.

David Bashevkin:
Gotcha.

Aharon Schrieber:
The pain, the injury. You need the injury as well. But there are times when you can prove that injury without the victim. And the question of whether to go forward in those cases is we talk about that every day, especially in domestic violence cases or in child abuse cases. It could be a similar calculus. You have people who are families, and sometimes spouses do terrible things to one another, and they don’t mean it, or the power of forgiveness comes in. And should we wield the power of the state to break up a family by convicting somebody of a crime that they undoubtedly committed and we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt, but should we wield that power?

David Bashevkin:
That’s a question at you sometimes?

Aharon Schrieber:
We often… Not often, I would say, daily, somebody in our bureau is asking that question, should we wield this power when a woman or a man does not want us to do so?

David Bashevkin:
Mm-hmm. Wow.

Aharon Schrieber:
The answer to that question is very, very case specific. It’s a question of whether we believe that future harm will be committed. How hard is that harm? How much worse is it to prosecute somebody than it might be to let it go?

David Bashevkin:
Sure.

Aharon Schrieber:
It’s not an easy question.

David Bashevkin:
So let me ask you… I have kind of one final question to you about you, and that is you came into public service, I’m sure very idealistic. You also became very communally involved. And I’m curious how this experience working for a DA has changed you. Have you become more cynical, more idealistic? Has the way that you look at voices in the community… is it with more esteem, is it differently? How has this changed your very perspective on these issues of now being kind of an insider to this world and privy to the processes that maybe people who sit in institutions of soft power don’t necessarily understand? So how have you changed from this experience?

Aharon Schrieber:
Well, I don’t know if I always handle… You can kind of tell because I don’t know what to say right now, because it’s much harder to talk about the vicarious trauma that people receive from working in these kinds of jobs.

David Bashevkin:
Meaning you, the trauma that you-

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah. Yeah.

David Bashevkin:
Vicariously being involved with trauma.

Aharon Schrieber:
Right. Exactly. So when you’re involved with trauma, you receive a certain amount of trauma.

David Bashevkin:
Sure.

Aharon Schrieber:
Alright. So I think one of the things that people really struggle with about these kinds of cases, especially when you see it happen in the Jewish community is there’s a feeling of helplessness. You’re like, “Oh shoot, this terrible thing happened and I can’t do anything.” Yeah, I can type on Twitter, I can go to a rally, I can do all these things, and those are really healthy ways to get involved in hopefully changing our community, but there’s a lot of powerless people who want to do something and I am very, very blessed, and I mean this so strongly, and this would be my pitch. If you want to make less money and be an ADA, I’d say do it because you wake up every day and you get to do something about it. And that’s really, really cool. All the other stuff is less important in terms of how it has changed me. You remember you met me when I was like 22?

David Bashevkin:
Sure.

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah. I don’t know. I think I’m older than what I am now because of it. Do I look at people differently? Yeah. How can you not? I think I see things that other people don’t. That’s not to toot my own horn. You can’t. Your prism has changed. You see things in your friends, couples, people who are married, you’re like, “Yeah, something’s wrong.”

David Bashevkin:
I’m never having you for Shabbos again. That’s for sure.

Aharon Schrieber:
Well, I knew Tova before you, so it’s helpful in that regard.

David Bashevkin:
God forbid, yeah.

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah, no, look, this is where I have trouble because I don’t know if I handle it well all the time.

David Bashevkin:
Gotcha. This has been an absolute privilege and pleasure. I always wrap up my interviews with more rapid fire questions. It’s a hard subject. We’re talking about sexual abuse and kind of the criminal justice system. Is there a book you would recommend either specifically tailored for the Jewish community or just a kind of a way to appreciate how the criminal justice system operates in general that is tailored for the public that you would recommend?

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah. So, like I mentioned before, I listen to your podcast. I knew these questions were coming and I don’t have a good answer, which I’m embarrassed about.

David Bashevkin:
And you knew this was coming.

Aharon Schrieber:
Knew it was coming and I didn’t do the research on it to find out what-

David Bashevkin:
God bless you.

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah. I know. I didn’t understand the assignment. But I think some things you can do is go down to your courthouse. It’s public. You can go into a criminal courtroom and just watch and ask the ADAs like, what’s going on? A reporter might be in the back, ask them like, what’s going on?

David Bashevkin:
They operate every day from…

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah. I mean, in the Bronx, they are open 9:30 to 5:00. I mean, it’s a little weird because of COVID right now.

David Bashevkin:
And you could just walk right in?

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah, these are public courtrooms.

David Bashevkin:
And they’re trying these serious cases?

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah. You just walk in, sit in the gallery. I mean, this-

David Bashevkin:
Can people do that? It’s like Judge Judy, but with actual stakes.

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah, you can do it. In law school, we had to do it.

David Bashevkin:
Fascinating. Do the ADAs know the regulars?

Aharon Schrieber:
No. I mean, there’s nobody doing that in our… because like, I wouldn’t notice even if there was somebody.

David Bashevkin:
Gotcha. Do you know reporters?

Aharon Schrieber:
I don’t know reporters. I mean, I follow reporters on Twitter, but I don’t know anybody.

David Bashevkin:
Or like on your beat, so to speak.

Aharon Schrieber:
There are people who that the more senior ADAs know because they’ve been around for longer and they’ve been handling the cases that are in the press. Like, thank God I haven’t had a case… Well, that’s not true. I did have one, but I’m too junior to generally have cases that the media is reporting on. But the guy down the hall from me is… his name has been in the paper many times…

David Bashevkin:
Many times.

Aharon Schrieber:
… as a prosecuting attorney. But to answer the question though, I would say, go down to the courthouse, see this stuff for your own eyes. And when things are in the paper, read the articles. They put facts in these articles. Don’t just read the headline and be like, “Oh, some celebrity, like, nah, it didn’t happen. I trust him.” Or like, “Oh, there’s my neighbor.”

David Bashevkin:
Yeah. I’m a big believer. I always try to get depositions, court information.

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah, the stuff is all public. That’s what’s to read. I mean, if you want to know the makings, like how the sausage is made, like the nuts and bolts of the criminal justice system, like… I don’t know. I should have come prepared with an answer for that question, so I apologize to the listening audience.

David Bashevkin:
But reading, experiencing that.

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah, reading.

David Bashevkin:
You know, we’ve discussed cases where I’ve downloaded, whether it’s deposition transcripts or a…

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah, I got a few for you.

David Bashevkin:
Yeah.

Aharon Schrieber:
Not from the Bronx. Just to be clear.

David Bashevkin:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah. Free ones on PACER.

David Bashevkin:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Aharon Schrieber:
I’m sure 18Forty is going to have a lovely catalog of stuff.

David Bashevkin:
Oh, absolutely.

Aharon Schrieber:
Can’t wait for the reader. Smash that subscribe button.

David Bashevkin:
My next question, I’m always curious, if somebody gave you a great deal of money-

Aharon Schrieber:
This one, I do have an answer to.

David Bashevkin:
… and allowed you to take a sabbatical with no responsibilities whatsoever, to go back to school and get a PhD, what do you think the subject title of that PhD would be?

Aharon Schrieber:
So I have two answers. One is that if I had to go get the PhD, it would be something involving comparing Star Wars to Judaism, trying to find the parallels, particularly between Moses’ ark as a character and Luke Skywalker, and seeing if there’s any… I don’t know, I haven’t investigated this.

David Bashevkin:
I read every page. I mean, it sounds like scholarship. Right now, that’s definitely a scholarly desideratum, as they say.

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah, I don’t even know what that word is, but…

David Bashevkin:
It requires scholarly attention.

Aharon Schrieber:
Yes, it does. I mean, I wrote something last May 4th for May the 4th about the usage of sunsets in Torah and in Star Wars.

David Bashevkin:
I remember that. That’s beautiful.

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah, yeah. I think you retweeted it actually.

David Bashevkin:
Yeah, always.

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah. What I would actually do with the money is I would go out and make a Twin Peaks style, scripted television show about the Modern Orthodox Jewish community. That’s actually what I would do.

David Bashevkin:
I’d love to-

Aharon Schrieber:
If that was allowed. I don’t know if the money came with the PhD.

David Bashevkin:
Requirement.

Aharon Schrieber:
My dad’s going to be so disappointed because my dad has a PhD and I don’t. I have a JD.

David Bashevkin:
You have a JD. Not quite the same.

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah.

David Bashevkin:
My final question. I’m always curious about people’s sleep schedules. What time do you go to sleep at night and what time do you wake up in the morning?

Aharon Schrieber:
So the wake up time is easier. I always get up at 6:30 during the work week. And on Shabbos and Sunday, generally like 7:30.

David Bashevkin:
That’s pretty early.

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah. Well, I can’t sleep. That’s the problem.

David Bashevkin:
What time do you go to sleep at night?

Aharon Schrieber:
That depends. Sometimes I pass out around 9:00 and sometimes I’m up until like 2:00. So I don’t know what time it is now. This is probably going to be one of those-

David Bashevkin:
It feels like it’s 2:00, right? Does it feel late?

Aharon Schrieber:
Yeah, it feels pretty late. It might be only like 9:30. So I don’t know how and when I’m going to fall asleep tonight. We’re going to find out in like, when I get home.

David Bashevkin:
Aharon Schrieber, what an absolute privilege and pleasure it has been speaking with you today.

Aharon Schrieber:
Thanks for having me. If I could just say one thing. I know you end stuff with that line, but you’re doing a really important public service here and thank you for using your platform to have me on, and I imagine you’re going to have a few other people on. So thank you for wielding your platform in a way that is so important for our community.

David Bashevkin:
My soft power, whether you yield a hard power or soft power, it comes with responsibility. And to be able to use this platform for something educational and specifically talking to a friend, but somebody who’s experienced, I think has informed my own outlook, perspective, and I know our listeners. I appreciate that, and I appreciate you and your wisdom. So thank you again, Aharon.

Aharon Schrieber:
Thank you.

David Bashevkin:
The distinction that will stay with me most from this conversation that I find incredibly insightful, aside from walking through the process of what happens when you call the police, which I happen to think is incredibly important and something that we need demystified and need normalized in a way to be able to do this so, God forbid, people within our community who have such issues go to the right place. But the distinction that I find most enlightening in this conversation is the difference between hard power and soft power, and to understand who wields what.

I find very often in such conversations that we look to the people who wield soft power and want them to yield hard power. We want them to arrest. We want them to criminalize. We want them to investigate. And very often we go to the people who wield hard power like the state, like a police department, and want them to step in and wield soft power. And I think what’s important both for advocates and any member in our community is to know the difference, to make sure that we understand the power of hard power and who wields it and when it needs to be wielded. And perhaps even more importantly to know the power of soft power and how that should be wielded.

Just because you don’t have handcuffs and you don’t have the ability to subpoena somebody, does not mean that you are powerless. We need to make sure that those who wield it have soft power and perhaps the power that I have in having a dinky, little platform or whatever it is, whether it’s on Twitter or on 18Forty, this is a form of soft power. It allows you to influence, it gives you a platform, it gives you ears to have conversations with. This is me wielding my soft power in whatever way that I can. Because on issues like this, silence and not talking about it isn’t really an option. And from whatever vantage point, whether it’s a family, whether it’s a community, to be able to educate and sharpen our ability to confront these problems. So all of the passersby and secondary victims who witness the way that we do respond to these issues are able to address them more thoughtfully and more effectively.

So thank you so much for listening. This episode like so many of our episodes was edited by our friend, Denah Emerson. It wouldn’t be a Jewish podcast without a little bit of Jewish guilt. So if you enjoyed this episode or any episode, please subscribe, rate, and review, tell your friends about it. You can also donate at 18forty.org/donate. It really helps us reach new listeners and continue putting out great content. You can also leave as a voicemail with feedback or questions that we may play in a future episode. That number is (917) 720-5629. Once again, that’s (917) 720-5629. If you’d like to learn more about this topic or some of the other great ones we’ve covered in the past, be sure to check out 18Forty.org. That’s the number 18, followed by the word, forty, F-O-R-T-Y.org, where you can also find videos, articles, and recommended readings. Thank you so much for listening and stay curious, my friends.