“Twenty-five years!” The implications were staggering. “And how many other girls has he done this to?”

“Done what?”

“Sexually groomed, touched, used for his own sexual gratification?”

“We’ve never had a single complaint from a parent or a child about Grub.”

“You’ve never had a complaint because everyone is afraid to open their mouths, afraid they’ll be treated the way you’re treating me and my daughter, pressuring us to keep quiet!”

“Pressuring you? What pressure? How dare you make accusations against innocent, respectable people. You have no proof. Nothing. ‘You shall not a talebearer be among your people,’” he said piously in Hebrew.

“Oh, so we’re playing that game? Okay, fine. And what about ‘Justice, and only justice, shall you follow,’ or ‘Let justice be done though the heavens fall’?”

“I see you took many shiurim,” he said sarcastically.

“And I remember them all, everything I was taught about how good and holy a person becomes when he follows God’s just laws.”

The door opened. A burly man in his fifties with a large black skullcap burst in. “You called me? There’s a problem?”

Rabbi Halpern exhaled, making a dismissive hand gesture. “It’s all right, Hyman. She’s just leaving.”

“If I do, I’m going straight to the police. So you might want to think about this a few minutes longer. And it won’t just be about Grub either but about your son Duvie, too.”

“Get out!” Halpern shouted.

She shot up.

“No, not you. You sit.”

The man disappeared, closing the door.

“What about my son?”

She thought fast. “My daughter was a minor, and your Duvie wasn’t. Sexual abuse—including statutory rape—is a felony in New York. And Grub is going down the same rabbit hole as Nechemya Weberman. And you, and your precious Bobelger Rebbe, are both his accomplices, so you are going down with him! Because you are right. Being who I am, you’re dealing with a woman who didn’t grow up on your sacred streets and doesn’t understand the unwritten codes here and won’t be intimidated. Got that? You throw my daughter out of school or hurt her in any way, and this conversation is over, and I won’t be coming back without the NYPD.”

He sat there, stunned and speechless. The minutes passed. The secretary poked her head in, concerned at the sudden silence. He waved her away, furious.

Finally, he composed himself. “Eppes,” he began mildly, in sharp contrast to his previous outbursts, “zeit ois az ich hob zich zu geheilt. Oh, you don’t know Yiddish? Maybe I was too hasty,” he quickly translated.

“Maybe we both were,” she said with equal restraint.

“Why don’t you ask your husband to come and see me, Mrs. Lehman?”

“And until then?”

“Maybe it would be best not to involve the girl.”

“So she stays in her class, without harassment, and without loshon hara?”