“I’m thinking it ought to be pretty simple to find out who leaked the documents"

F

or some time already, Raizele had been telling Yanky that there was a mistake in the pension deduction from his salary. They were taking too much, she said, and the employer’s contribution was also higher than it should be. Yanky was unschooled in these matters, but Raizele spoke on the phone with the bookkeeper at the yeshivah and pointed out the error. A few days later, Yanky was asked to come into the office and pick up a check covering the difference.

He climbed the six steps leading to the yeshivah office. The outer room, where the secretaries usually sat, was empty. From the inner room, the director’s office, urgent voices emanated.

Yanky knocked on the door, and opened it after a discreet two-second pause. Everyone in the room fell silent instantly. Shaye Langerman was there, along with the two secretaries, the rosh yeshivah, and Yanky’s father.

“I, uh, just came to pick up a check from Menachem,” Yanky murmured.

“You can come in, and you can listen to our discussion, too,” said Langerman with a sour expression. “Maybe you can even help us. I’m sure you’ve heard about our own little Wikileaks.”

“You mean those affidavits they’ve been passing around?”

“Yes,” said Menachem Levron. “I’m thinking it ought to be pretty simple to find out who leaked the documents. Every bochur who read them got them from someone. So if we just do a simple investigation and ask each fellow who passed the documents to him, we’ll eventually get to the person at the top of the chain.”

“What if somebody breaks the chain by refusing to say who handed him the documents?” Yanky asked.

“Oh, our staff has ways of getting information from the bochurim.”

“And what if it’s an avreich, not a bochur? Or if a bochur claims he forgot who handed them over, or says he found them on the windowsill in the dorm? Or that his grandmother received them in an anonymous e-mail and printed them out?”

“Remember,” Rav Kitovitz said quietly, “we don’t want to turn into a Spanish Inquisition.”

All this philosophizing clearly irked Shaye Langerman. “Menachem,” he said, his voice sharp and focused, “try again to remember what happened the day we received that sealed envelope from the lawyer. Who came into the office that day? Who could have opened the envelope, photocopied the papers, and put them back inside before we got to them?”

(Excerpted from Mishpacha, Issue 796)