South Blooming Grove's Joel Stern Demands Convicted Pedophile Go Free
A controversial letter circulating in the Haredi community has a couple of familiar signatories here in Southern Orange County and Northern Rockland schvitzing their pants.
Let’s take a trip back to May of 2009.
Samuel “Mendy” Israel, aka Schmuel “Mendy” Israel, took an Agudath Israel-sponsored trip to Albany. If Agudath Israel sounds familiar, it’s the same organization that lobbied New York State Governor Kathy Hochul — on behalf of Joel Stern and Yitzchok “Isaac” Ekstein — to kill the land preservation bill in Blooming Grove. Rabbi Yeruchim Silber, Director of New York Government Relations for Agudath Israel of America, wrote at the time:
‘A recent attempt to keep Jews out of an area has been festering in the Town of Blooming Grove in Orange County, whose officials wanted to establish a real estate transfer tax for collecting revenue that would be utilized to preserve agricultural land and parks --- read prevent Jewish home developers from building housing in the Town.’
Mr. Silber never backed up this assertion with any facts. (And by the way, he is also a signatory on the letter I will share with you. So, the next time Mr. Silber comes to our neck of the woods, and he will, I encourage you to be skeptical of his public statements.)
But in 2009, Agudath Israel’s Mr. Silber, Chaim Israel — Mendy’s father — and Mendy Israel lobbied against a bill that passed the Assembly and was on its way to the State Senate. That bill would have recognized same-sex marriage in New York State. It finally became law here in June 2011 and later nationally because of the Obergefell v. Hodges decision in 2015.
So, given the statements from Agudath Israel concerning their opposition to same sex marriage, they’d feel just as strongly about pedophiles in the Haredi community, right? Well … That’s the subject of today’s story. A lot of you demanded we cover this. So don’t go saying we don’t listen to our readers.
But … Before we proceed. I want to give you the usual preamble when it comes to our Haredi brothers and sisters. Because unlike Convicted Felon Timothy Mitts, we don’t traffic in anti-semitic conspiracy theories created by local Nazi, Jay Westerveld. When Mr. Mitts refers to yours truly as a “gerbil” he is repeating the Nazi Westerveld’s anti-semitic, dehumanizing rhetoric against Jews.
So, we can factually say Mr. Mitts is a Nazi collaborator, given his continued use and repetition of Mr. Westerveld’s anti-semitic language and conspiracy theories. Isn’t that fun? You figure Mitts would learn to close his mouth by now about us, but the man does seem to enjoy being served L, after L, after L, after L, after L …
Anyway. In Orange and Rockland Counties, most of our Haredi friends are Satmar, and they are decent, kind, and hardworking people who abide by the law. Despite what Mr. Westerveld and Mr. Mitts would like to tell you. The problem between Haredi and the Non-Haredi in our region almost always stems from local real estate developers from the Haredi community (see: Moche Halpern and Ziggy Brach) who think they’re above the law. Although after South Blooming Grove’s Joel Stern gave State Senator James Skoufis $10,000, you’d certainly be forgiven for thinking Mr. Brach and his Clovewood project are indeed above the law. Just take a look at the runoff from the Clovewood property that’s been shared with the DEC numerous times. At no point has Mr. Skoufis written a letter on behalf of residents asking for these permits to be revoked despite the fact that Brach’s companies continue to be fined by the DEC after permits were granted to them. Mr. Skoufis’s office refuses to acknowledge these requests to write such a letter. Ditto with Assemblyman Brian Maher, who also represents the Village.
Pictured above: Turbidity in the Satterly Creek, as reported by Blooming Grove resident Ryne Kitzrow in April of 2025.
Instead, the State Senator copied and pasted a lame ass timeline to residents when asked what he was doing about the multitude of crises happening in the village. You’ll notice though in his timeline a severe dropoff in activity as it goes on. You’ll also note that the New York State Comptroller’s audit is now well over a year old, and still not completed. This audit is something Skoufis has claimed credit for, despite no evidence to back up that claim. And, if he does take credit for it, why hasn’t he provided an update on it? The Comptroller’s office will not comment on the audit, nor will they comment on concerns shared by residents involving fees for a second garbage pickup they did not ask for.
(Yes. I got all your emails about this second garbage pickup. I’m looking into possible solutions, but like I keep saying, your best bet is to sue the Village. Also, if you skip to the end of this article and watch this week’s South Blooming Grove Village Board meeting, you’ll hear one resident’s issues with the village’s bad water situation. So it’s fair to say State Senator James G. Skoufis doesn’t give a flying fuck about any of you.)
No community is perfect. Even when some of the machers (the Yiddish word for the self-important types) in the Haredi community want you to think otherwise.
So when I publish a story like this, I don’t want people pointing to it and going, “Oh! See! Look at that bad shit those Jews are doing! See? I told you they were bad!” No. We’re not doing that. If you see someone doing that, smack them upside the head. This isn’t some Tim Mitts political campaign. We don’t put up with that anti-semitic shit here.
Meet Samuel “Mendy” Israel
A few years after Agudath Israel’s big anti-gay bus ride, The New York Times published an exposé on how some members of Haredi communities (the Times calls them Ultra-Orthodox, but Haredi is the correct term) shun those who go to the police to report sex crimes. Agudath Israel again found itself in the middle of a shit storm, when they took the position that the Haredi communities they represent — remember, there are over thirty different Haredi groups, and you should not assume they are some monolith — should go to a Rabbi before they go to the police to report a sex crime. (Makes you rethink their holier-than-thou position on trying to stop a land preservation tax in Blooming Grove, huh?)
On March 2nd, 2016, one of the men who came to lobby against the same sex marriage bill, Samuel “Mendy” Israel, was arrested for felony child sex abuse charges. Mr. Israel was accused of molesting a girl for a period of seven years by prosecutors. Beginning when she was ten.
Mr. Samuel Israel was offered a plea deal, turned it down, and was out after posting $100,000 bail. Because it’s nice to be a macher, isn’t it? This is an important point, because like in any group of people, you got the wealthy and the well-connected who don’t follow the rules, and then the rest of us mooks. So this is less a story about “The Jews” and more a story about the wealthy being able to manipulate and abuse our legal system. (I’ll see you all at the next Monroe protest on May 17th from 1pm to 2pm, rain or shine. Mr. Mitts may even grace us with his presence, since he’s now claiming he circled the protest and that there was less people than the organizers documented. So much for walking the walk, huh? “I drove around the protest!” Ok, cool story loser.)
At the time, Mr. Samuel Israel was a member of the Boro Park Y on 14th Avenue in Brooklyn. It was reported that the Boro Park Y was informed of concerns about Mr. Samuel Israel on March 3rd of that year — so, the day following the arrest — but he was only removed in June. One speculated reason for the delay by the Board? Chaim Israel, Mendy’s father, was the Chairman of the Board at the time. Mr. Samuel Israel was represented by Israel (Izzy) Fried, who was alleged at the time to be a “specialist” when it came to representing Haredi defendants accused of sex crimes. I only note this here because there’s a constant drumbeat from Hanhallah, the leadership of the Satmar community, that they don’t have any crime. Yes. We know that’s flat out false. And if that claim were true, Mr. Israel Fried would probably be doing something else with his law degree.
At the time, when The Daily News first reported on the story, Samuel Israel also claimed to be a Bedford-Stuyvesant Volunteer Ambulance Corps member. But Rocky Robinson, the captain of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Volunteer Ambulance Corp. told the Daily News about Israel: “He’s a fraud and a fake. He’s not one of my guys but fraudulently made placards and falsely received a VAS license plate” (If that sounds like Joel Stern, hold on, we’re getting to that fellow fraudster soon.)
A year later, the Brooklyn District Attorney announced the arrest of private detective Vincent Parco, who Samuel “Mendy” Israel hired to coerce the woman he abused not to cooperate with the prosecution’s case.
Above: Vinnie Parco, who was a Reality TV star for a time, explains how being on a reality television show can open you up for a lawsuit. Parco was convicted for participating in a scheme of Samuel Israel’s to coerce the victim from working with the prosecution.
According to the District Attorney's office’s statement from September of 2017:
“In July 2016, according to the investigation, Israel hired Vincent Parco, who owns a private investigative firm, to surreptitiously record embarrassing video images of a family member of the victim to allegedly get the victim to stop cooperating against Israel. He was allegedly paid approximately $17,000.
It is alleged that on December 17, 2016, Tanya Freudenthaler, after being enlisted by Parco, lured the family member to a hotel room in Sunset Park, where she and Parco had installed video recording equipment. She allegedly also hired a prostitute, who she recorded having sex with the family member. The equipment malfunctioned, so Freudenthaler allegedly set up another encounter two days later, on December 19, 2016.
Freudenthaler hired the same prostitute for the second encounter, as well as a second prostitute. The family member was secretly recorded with both women.
On January 6, 2017, Israel appeared in court, was offered the same plea he had been offered earlier in the case, and rejected it. On January 17, 2017, the family member recorded at the hotel was approached by a stranger wearing a scarf who showed him a cell phone video of the hotel encounter and stated: “Be smart. Stop making trouble.” The family member reported the incident to the DA’s office.
Israel’s case proceeded and a trial date was set for June 26, 2017. On June 22, 2017, a stranger approached another member of the victim’s family and showed that person a cell phone containing video from the hotel.
Finally, a third person contacted the family member and allegedly offered to act as a mediator, offering to obtain the video from Israel and destroy it and to obtain a statement from Israel admitting to his crimes as “insurance” in the event the video gets released but he cautioned the family member not to report any of this to the authorities.
This was also reported to the DA’s office and on June 26, 2017, investigators from the District Attorney’s office executed a search warrant at the third party’s home and recovered the video of the hotel encounter and a statement in which Israel makes some admissions as to improperly touching the victim.
Videos of the encounter were also recovered from Parco’s office computer, pursuant to a search warrant, and he subsequently admitted that he was hired by Israel.”
So, to recap, Israel hired Parco and associates to catch members of the victim’s family in a sting operation, and then use the material from that sting operation to coerce the victim from working with the prosecutors.
According to the Jewish Telegraph Agency, one of the items found in the search of Parco’s material was a statement in which Samuel Israel admitted to touching the victim.
In October of 2018, Samuel “Mendy” Israel was sentenced to eight years in prison. His victim told the court, according to The New York Post, “He has absolutely no morals [...]“He stole my innocence, and my childhood. I was 10-years-old at the time he started to sexually abuse me. He groomed me to the point where I didn’t know it was wrong or, at 10-years-old, how sick it was.”
Ok. But What About Joel Stern?
That brings us to the letter allegedly signed by Yeruchim Silber, Director of New York Government Relations, Agudath Israel of America, Joel Stern, Gedayla Szegedin of the Village of Kiryas Joel, and others. You can see the original letter sent to Governor Kathy Hochul requesting Mr. Samuel's release here. I say allegedly, because there appear to be two versions of this letter.
And here’s where this story gets kind of nutty. The original one is the one I just showed you. And we spoke to a source with direct knowledge of the original letter, who clarified that the intent was for Mr. Israel to be released for a limited number of days for Passover, because no Kosher food was available. A lawyer we spoke to, upon reviewing the original letter, told The Monroe Gazette, “What that person is describing to you is a furlough, not a commutation, which is what this letter is asking for.”
You’ll also notice that the original letter is not signed by any of the men I just mentioned. (If the men sent their own versions of the same letter to the Governor or Jacob Adler, the Director of Jewish Affairs for Governor Hochul, that is not known at this time.)
The second version of the letter began circulating online, after Za’akah posted it on Facebook at the end of April. The original letter was dated April 3rd. The second letter was dated April 7th and sent by email to Governor Kathy Hochul’s office. We called and emailed Governor Kathy Hochul’s office to comment on this story, and will update this article if we receive a response.
Note the signatories in the second version of the letter:
In a statement released by Za’akah, an organization committed to fighting Child Sexual Abuse in the Orthodox Jewish, they said,
“In case anyone thinks that this letter is driven by a genuine concern for the wellbeing of incarcerated people in New York State prisons whose Pesach will be affected by conditions within those prisons, they're not asking for more resources to be devoted to all Jews in all prisons across the state. They are extolling the virtues of one pedophile who repeatedly sexually assaulted a family member for 6 years, calling him an exceptional person, and claiming that he is uniquely deserving of a commutation, and using Pesach as a hook to make the request. Not a single person on this very long list of signatories has ever publicly supported survivors of sexual abuse, and undoubtedly none of them reached out to Mendy Israel's victim to ask her how she feels about this or about Israel's character. It is deeply shameful, and the epitome of Chillul Hashem, that when the governor of New York sees the public expenditure of significant political capital by these important rabbis and community leaders, she sees it expended on behalf of some disgusting pedophile. What does it say about our community that these people who claim to speak for us do so on behalf of this disgusting menuval?”
Now, given Mr. Joel Stern is at the center of an ongoing White Collar Crime Spree of his own in South Blooming Grove, we had some questions about this alleged second letter. What follows is our email to Mr. Stern:
Dear Mr. Stern …
You are a signatory on a letter to Governor Hochul requesting the release of convicted pedophile, Mendy Israel.
Mr. Israel was convicted of abusing a member of his family, a ten-year-old, for almost six years, and then hired a private investigator to smear a member of that victim's family.
You signed a letter asking for Mr. Israel's sentence to be commuted.
We want to ask the following questions for our piece on this letter:
As indicated in your letter, can you explain how the recent correctional officer strike has specifically impacted Mr. Israel?
Can you explain how these strikes and lockdowns, as you described, specifically impact Mr. Israel's ability to observe Passover?
The letter claims to represent the entire Orthodox Community. It says, "the undersigned Jewish Leaders representing the entire Orthodox communities in New York State."
But I couldn't help but notice that most of these signatories, such as yourself and Gedayla Szegedin of Kiryas Joel, specifically represent the Satmar community.
Can you clarify whether or not this letter speaks for every member of New York State's wonderfully diverse Orthodox community?
Can it be factually said that this letter speaks for every non-Satmar member of New York State's Haredi community?
You do understand that many in the Orthodox community do NOT identify as members of the Haredi community, correct?
Given your eagerness to have a convicted pedophile released from prison, would you welcome him here in South Blooming Grove?
Why are you calling for this specific benefit for Mr. Israel and not all of our Jewish brothers and sisters currently serving time in New York State facilities?
Have you spoken to any of Mr. Israel's victims? Have you asked how they feel about Mr. Israel's character, which your letter speaks to so positively?
Can you please share a previous letter or communication released by the UJC of BG that publicly supported survivors of sexual abuse?
Can you please share a previous letter or communication released by the UJC of BG that publicly calls for better treatment and care of all Jewish prisoners (non-Haredi and Haredi alike)?
My deadline is tomorrow. Not 90 days from now, Mr. Stern. Do try to be more expedient with your response than you are with your FOIL requests
We also sent a follow-up asking, “Just a follow-up: I couldn't help but notice your advocacy for the release of Mr. Israel, signed on behalf of the UJC of BG, is not at all discussed in today's newsletter from the UJC of BG. Can you clarify why that might be?
Mr. Stern did not reply, as usual.
Now, while we can’t comment much on the first letter, we can comment on the second letter. We’ve talked to sources close to the matter who confirmed its authenticity. They also shared that numerous signatories are backpedaling from this second letter as fast as Convicted Felon Tim Mitt’s attorney when we reminded him about New York State’s SLAPP laws.
Some of the signatories are saying they didn’t sign the second letter, or that this wasn’t the letter they intended to sign. They thought they were signing for another Samuel Israel. Not Samuel “Mendy” Israel.
But here’s the thing …
Here in New York State, you can look up incarcerated people. And wouldn’t you know it, there’s only one Samuel Israel currently in jail, and his DIN number is the same as in both versions of the letter.
Now, this is pure speculation on my part, but I feel the line I got about how the first letter was for Israel to be released for only a few days is part of that quick u-turn after backlash from the larger Haredi community.
But I want to stress that’s just an opinion. At no point, at least as far as we were able to find, as of this writing, did anyone put out a statement saying they were duped. So, your mileage may vary on the “We meant a different Samuel Israel” claim.
Stern has offered no such excuse. If you watch this week’s South Blooming Grove Village Board meeting, Stern is called out on the letter by resident Bonnie Rum, both during the meeting when Stern attempts to interrupt her, and then again at the end:
In an upcoming post, we’ll talk more about the “State of Emergency” and the Village’s latest hare-brained scheme involving the water emergency. And, as a reminder, The Monroe Gazette has numerous FOILS that the Village has now decided to try and indefinitely delay. But in the next few weeks, we have a plan to put a stop to that too. I’ll share more as it happens. But if you’re like, “BJ. Why don’t you talk more about South Blooming Grove?” It’s because they’re intentionally delaying our FOILS, and we need to sue them again, which we fully intend on doing unless they suddenly decide to cooperate. We’re always hopeful that they will, but we doubt it.
So, that’s the story on the letter. If you like independent journalism, you can become a subscriber at the link below. Subscribing gives you access to our Private Facebook Group, our archives, and the ability to leave a comment on posts like this one.