NJ.COM A prominent Lakewood rabbi convicted of helping to arrange the
kidnapping of Orthodox Jewish men who refused to grant their wives
religious divorces was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Tuesday.
The sentence for Rabbi Mendel Epstein, 70, is less than what the
federal government had requested for a man prosecutors said was the head
of a well-organized operation that kidnapped and beat men. But it also
was more than what his defense attorney argued was deserving of a man
who devoted his life to good deeds and charitable acts.
The sentence was one, though, that U.S. District Judge Freda Wolfson
said was necessary to deter others in the Orthodox Jewish community from
continuing what federal prosecutors called "paid vigilantism."
"No one is permitted to commit acts of violence against another,"
Wolfson said during the three-hour sentencing proceeding in Trenton. "It
is not the law of our society and what we live under."
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