Jews for Allah

[Guest]

Rabbi Charged With Molesting Girl, 14
LA Times, August 16, 2002 Friday Home Edition - California Metro; Part 2; Page 4; Metro Desk



A 33-year-old rabbi has been charged with sexually molesting a 14-year-old girl, the district attorney's office said. Michael Ozair pleaded not guilty to the charges last week. If convicted, he could be sent to prison for 10 years.



Ozair is a former teacher at Shalhevet High School in Los Angeles and Sinai Akiba in Westwood, according to the district attorney's office.



He has lectured and taught at several congregations in West Los Angeles and Venice, prosecutors said.



The alleged molestation took place in June.





Rabbi Charged With Molesting A Student

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

August 12, 2002
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contacts: Joe Scott, Director of Communications
Sandi Gibbons, Public Information Officer
Jane Robison, News Secretary
(213) 974-3525


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

LOS ANGELES – A 33-year-old Rabbi and former teacher at Shalhevet High School in Los Angeles has been charged with sexually molesting a 14-year-old girl, the District Attorney’s Office announced Monday.

Deputy District Attorney Renee Korn said Michael Ozair (dob 1-4-69), a freelance rabbi in the Los Angeles area, has been charged with three counts of lewd act on a child and one count of oral copulation of a child under 16 in case No. SA046100. Ozair has lectured and taught classes as a rabbi with severall local congregations, including the Happy Minyan congregation in Beverly Hills, Metivta congregation in West Los Angeles, and Mishkon Tephilo Synagogue in Venice. In addition to teaching at Shalhevet, Ozair also was employed as a teacher at Sinai Akiba in Westwood up until 2001.

Ozair, who pleaded not guilty at his Aug. 8 arraignment, is scheduled to be in Airport Court, Department 145, on Sept. 4 for a preliminary hearing. Bail was set at $95,000.

Ozair is suspected of sexually assaulting the victim in 1997. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in state prison.



Rabbi Michael Ozair




IN GYD WE DWELL




BIOGRAPHY

Family Background

Rabbi Michael Ozair is of the first generation on his father's side to be born outside of Iraq - Ancient Babylon - in 2,600 years! He is a direct descendent of the Biblical prophet, scribe and priest, Ezra who is described in the Talmud as being the "Moses of his generation" (the family name 'Ozair' is Arabic for Ezra). Michael comes from a very long line of rabbis and mystics from the earliest days of the Talmud (Rabbi Azarya) to the most recent Chief Rabbi of Basra,Iraq who was his great uncle and a colleague to the great Iraqi kabbalist, the Ben Ish Chai (as seen below on the left).




On his mother's side is his Chasidic roots from Galicia, Poland. His mother Devorah and her immediate family were six of the only twenty five survivors in their town of ten thousand Jews, after the Holocaust. Their survival was miraculous, to say the least. Below is a picture of Rabbi Michael's family - the Faust family - which includes Michael's great grandfather, great uncles and great great grandfather who perished as part of the Six Million..


Faust Family - Rohatyn, Poland 1912.

----------------------------------------------------

GROWING UP

During his childhood, Michael was a very caring and sensitive soul. At the tender age of five, he was nicknamed "philosopher" by his camp counselors due to his deep ponderings into the nature of things. He did not attract much attention in his earliest years, but was rather solitary and meditative, and liked to walk alone out in nature in order to contemplate its beauty and to decipher, even then, its hidden wisdom and mysterious language.

Feeling in his youth the desire to devote his life to God, while his school peers ran after the material vanities of Los Angeles, he began his spiritual quest at a very early age. In the beginning, his spiritual journey introduced him to the California counter culture which was a whirlpool of Grateful Dead concerts, Hindu ashrams, and "vision quests", as paths in search of the Beloved. During that time he experimented with many esoteric teachings and Eastern philosophies. It was early in his youth that he also met his charismatic Hasidic mentor and good friend of the next fourteen years, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach zt"l (as seen below to the right).

During much of his High School and College years, Michael became a center of attraction among the other students, because of his gifts as an orator and his ability to talk about the hidden wisdom of everyday living — wisdom which he drew from the very source of Spirit. His earliest role of spiritual leader came at the age of seventeen.

At age eighteen, he left on a "short trip" to Israel, not to return until two years later. This time, he returned with a skull cap on his crown chakra and tzitzit (ritual fringes) dangling from his waist. He then devoted the next five years of his life in seclusion, devoting every spare moment to the study of Torah and Kabbalah. For these 5 years, he lived a life of meditation, spiritual study, contemplation, and prayer.

By his mid-twenties, Michael became one of the original founders and spiritual leader of a Los Angeles Jewish Revival group called the Happy Minyan, infusing a new spiritual vitality to the religious community. He then left to Monsey, New York to formally train as a rabbi at the Kol Yaacov Torah Academy. In the Fall of 1998, Michael was ordained.

It wasn't long after Michael returned to California that he became one of the most inspiring teachers in the field of Jewish Spirituality. His career brought him on staff with many of the best schools and Jewish institutions. His teaching style was progressive, engaging, heartfelt and experiential.

TODAY

Today, through the will and direction of Spirit, Rabbi Michael has forged an independent Jewish path in pursuit of Truth. His own teaching has been lauded as one of the most original and complete contemporary expressions of awakened understanding through the path of Kabbalah. Perhaps most notably, he has captured the imagination of the modern New Age community by igniting dynamic dialogues with spiritual leaders and visionaries from every tradition. Ceaselessly questioning his own experience and observing the evolutionary shifts of today's world, Michael has emerged as a contemporary voice in the quest to understand what it means to seek, attain and hold sacred space in the birthing process of the New Energy.

In addition to his work as both a published writer and an accomplished public speaker, Rabbi Michael is a spiritual mentor to many Jewish and non-Jewish students who have come together united in a commitment to living the spiritual life, not for personal gain but for the purpose of discovering a different possibility for humanity. Kabbalah and Meditation Study Circles dedicated to this vision can be found in the Kabbalah Circles section of this website.

TESTIMONIALS