Conviction Jewish institutions and contexts Other Jewish institution or hearing Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York, USA · 2009

United States: bar mitzvah tutor and social worker convicted on seven counts of sexual abuse in Brooklyn, conviction affirmed on appeal

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Disposition and response

Material that narrows or disputes the record

Appellate history

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

bar mitzvah tutor giving lessons at a synagogue, licensed social worker

Organization

Khal Beth Abraham, Brooklyn, Supreme Court, Kings County, Appellate Division, Second Department

Archive classification

This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.

One of the two complainants was a boy Weinberg taught in bar mitzvah lessons at the Khal Beth Abraham synagogue, so that the access to that child ran through the role of religious instructor preparing him for a rite of passage.

Guru or spiritual-teacher authority

Scope decision

The two convictions rest on different kinds of access and this record does not treat them as equivalent. Reporting establishes that one complainant was a bar mitzvah student Weinberg taught at a synagogue, and the other was a client of his separate secular work as a licensed social worker for the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services. Only the first is a spiritual-authority nexus; the social-work count is professional and custodial access of the kind this archive does not itself count, and it is recorded here because it is part of the same judgment, not as a second instance of the pattern. The conviction and its affirmance are taken from the Appellate Division's published opinion, which recites the counts, the court, the trial judge and the disposition but does not itself describe how Weinberg had access to either complainant; the tutoring role is sourced to contemporaneous reporting rather than to the court of record. Weinberg later moved to Israel, and litigation there over public warnings about him is a separate matter on which this record makes no finding.

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2009-09-29 · conviction and sentence after nonjury trial

Supreme Court, Kings County, New York, USA. Yona Weinberg was convicted after a nonjury trial before Justice Gustin Reichbach of seven counts of sexual abuse in the second degree and two counts of endangering the welfare of a child, and was sentenced on 29 September 2009. He served approximately thirteen months and was designated a level 3 sex offender on release.
2010-07-20 · direct appeal decided

Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Second Department. The judgment was affirmed in full, reported at 75 A.D.3d 612, 904 N.Y.S.2d 906. The court rejected the confrontation-clause and rape-shield challenges, held the prosecutorial-misconduct and religious-belief contentions unpreserved and in any event without merit, and held the sentence not excessive, referring to 'the overwhelming evidence of the defendant's guilt'.

Documented coercion mechanisms

private religious instruction of boys preparing for bar mitzvah
community pressure on complainants after they came forward

Cited record

Sources

court of record appellate opinion People v. Weinberg, 75 A.D.3d 612, 904 N.Y.S.2d 906 (N.Y. App. Div. 2d Dep't, 20 July 2010).: The published appellate opinion, read in full. It records an appeal from a judgment of the Supreme Court, Kings County (Reichbach, J.), rendered 29 September 2009, 'convicting him of sexual abuse in the second degree (seven counts) and endangering the welfare of a child (two counts), after a nonjury trial, and imposing sentence', and orders 'that the judgment is affirmed'. The court held the rape-shield exclusion proper, held the Molineux and religious-belief contentions unpreserved and without merit, and referred to 'the overwhelming evidence of the defendant's guilt'. It held the sentence not excessive.
national news agency news report Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 'Israeli court ruling could limit warnings against convicted abusers' (28 March 2018).: Reporting on Weinberg's history, used here only for the fact of his roles and the identity of the complainants' connection to him: that he worked as a bar mitzvah tutor and as a licensed social worker, that one victim was a student he taught bar mitzvah lessons to at the Khal Beth Abraham synagogue and the other a client of his social-work practice, and that he was designated a level 3 sex offender and later moved to Israel.

Source provenance

Source access and integrity log

This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.

Source and tier basis: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/5946202/people-v-weinberg/ Corpus classification: court-of-record; evidentiary role: appellate-opinion.
Retrieval: 2026-07-28 · Preserved; Bound by Fear research cycle 2026-07-28 (appellate opinion read in full via CourtListener; disposition and counts taken from the opinion text, access mechanism from reporting and marked as such)
Source and tier basis: https://www.jta.org/2018/03/28/ny/israeli-court-ruling-could-limit-warnings-against-convicted-abusers Corpus classification: national-news-agency; evidentiary role: news-report.
Retrieval: 2026-07-28 · Preserved; Bound by Fear research cycle 2026-07-28 (appellate opinion read in full via CourtListener; disposition and counts taken from the opinion text, access mechanism from reporting and marked as such)

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