'It's not his story': 'Chopped' chef accuser discusses alleged abuse and her recovery
In the devoutly religious community in which she grew up, Elisheva Akselrod was raised to be obedient.
Children shouldn't argue with their elders, her parents told her, and women should be submissive to men.
So when an unfamiliar man showed up at her Fair Lawn synagogue in 2016 and interrupted the 14-year-old's conversation with her friends, she didn't reprimand him, she said. His comments were flirtatious — if not outrageous, coming from someone twice her age — but she didn't say anything, she recalled.
"It would have been disrespectful," Akselrod said ruefully this week.
The stranger, Akselrod said, was Shalom "Sal" Yehudiel, a Teaneck restaurant owner who would become a minor celebrity in the Orthodox Jewish world after he became the first kosher chef to compete on the Food Network. Yehudiel's fame has since turned to notoriety. He has faced a series of sexual assault allegations since 2020, though most of them have been dismissed or dropped. Last week, however, the Union County Prosecutor's Office filed criminal charges against him for allegedly abusing an underage victim, identified in court only as a 14- to 15-year old from Bergen County.
Akselrod, 21 and now living in Brooklyn, says she was that girl.
Taking control of the narrative
Like most news outlets, NorthJersey.com typically does not identify alleged sexual assault victims. But Akselrod has come forward and asked to be named. She said she wants to eradicate the stigma surrounding such abuse and take control of her story.
She said she has found it dehumanizing as news accounts described her as an anonymous entity while dwelling on Yehudiel's rise and fall.
"A lot of times victims are glossed over and nobody cares about them," she said. Yehudiel "doesn't deserve the publicity. It's not his story. It's about all the people he hurt. If those people don't get to be named, it just adds to the problem."
Akselrod, who previously filed a civil lawsuit against Yehudiel in state Superior Court in Bergen County, says her only motive has been to put her abuser behind bars so that he can't hurt anyone else.
Akselrod's attorney, Michael Gorokhovich, told NorthJersey.com he dismissed that lawsuit Friday morning because Yehudiel has been charged criminally by the Union County Prosecutor's office.
"All we ever wanted was a prosecution based on the evidence," he said. "We don't want a dime from him."
Yehudiel, who has residences listed in Fair Lawn and in Florida, has repeatedly professed his innocence, saying his accusers are motivated by money. In court filings in criminal and civil cases, he has noted that the Bergen County Prosecutor declined to bring charges in Akselrod's case. After Akselrod brought legal action over that decision, the investigation was transferred to Union County, where a different prosecutor decided there was enough evidence to move forward.
The saga took a series of bizarre turns over the past few weeks.
On Aug. 7, a Bergen County judge dismissed sexual assault charges brought against Yehudiel in a separate case on procedural grounds. The next day, as he was attempting to fly out of John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York with a one-way ticket to Thailand, he was arrested at the behest of Union County prosecutors, who had filed the new charges that morning.
'In the depths of a nightmare'
On Tuesday, Yehudiel's attorneys filed a motion to dismiss those counts and said the former chef had been attacked and badly injured by an inmate at Rikers Island, where Yehudiel was detained pending extradition to New Jersey.
"He is in the depths of a nightmare — one that was completely preventable, and which is completely unjust," attorneys Lee Vartan and Zach Intrater said in the motion.
Yehudiel's response to the allegations in the civil case was that when he first came to the synagogue to visit his father, he noticed that Akselrod was depressed, and, in his caring fashion, tried to be kind to her as a "big brother."
His attorneys also said that though there were at least 100 congregants at the Fair Lawn synagogue where Yehudiel allegedly met and pursued Akselrod, none has come forward as a witness. There is also no videotaped evidence of any assault, defense attorneys said. The motion also alleges that Akselrod sent sexually suggestive messages to Yehudiel, and not the other way around.
"The Union County Prosecutor has brought charges that the Bergen County Prosecutor twice investigated and twice declined to prosecute," Intrater and Vartan added in an emailed statement. "As recently as February 2023, the Bergen County Prosecutor said it ‘did not support the issuance of criminal charges’ against Mr. Yehudiel. This is an abuse of process, and this case will be dismissed."
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The charges that were dropped Aug. 7 involved another allegedly underage victim who worked at Yehudiel's former eatery in Teaneck, Humble Toast. A judge dismissed them after the defense argued they weren't given access to a video that could have helped his case.
Yehudiel was also sued in 2020 by a former waitress at Humble Toast who alleged that he abused her for a year, beginning when she was 17. She eventually abandoned her claim and the case was dismissed.
Akselrod's story
Akselrod tells a very different story. When Yehudiel first showed up at her Orthodox synagogue in Fair Lawn in 2016, he showered the teenager with attention, she said, calling her "beautiful" and commenting on her "sexy haircut." Akselrod said she tried to tell him politely that his attention was unwanted but was too timid to be assertive and so he continued to prey on her through his comments and physical interactions, according to her complaint filed in Superior Court.
Eventually, he began bringing her to isolated spots of the temple property, where he sexually abused her in a series of incidents that lasted a year, beginning in 2016, the court document said.
For a long time, Akselrod said, she was too intimidated and ashamed to speak out or to tell anyone.
She said that when she finally revealed the abuse to her parents and uncle in 2019, they reported it to the Fair Lawn police, who contacted the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office. Akselrod and Gorokhovich contend the office bungled that investigation, leading to its decision to close the case without pressing charges. Gorokhovich says the office failed to examine witnesses and text messages that support Akselrod's case.
"We conducted an investigation, and as a result of that investigation, we declined to charge Shalom Yehudiel," Elizabeth Rebein, a spokeswoman for the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office, said in a statement to NorthJersey.com. She declined to offer any other details.
But Akselrod's allegations did prompt charges against Yehudiel by the Union Country Prosecutor.
Akselrod said she long ago banished the submissive girl who was too frightened to speak her mind.
On a recent day, she spoke confidently with a reporter from the sunny apartment she shares with her partner. In a Zoom interview, she discussed a variety of topics before addressing her alleged abuse.
The psychological trauma of her abuse weighs heavily on her and she says the impact is permanent. She refuses to walk anywhere near the synagogue where the incidents took place, she says.
Yet she's created a life that brings her joy. She talks about a summer spent traveling with friends in Canada and California. And when discussing her dreams for her future she smiles. She's looking forward to her senior year at City University of New York, where she is majoring in audio engineering and she's excited about the prospect of working in film after graduation.
Dangerous waters
She's already enjoyed a taste of success, having been nominated for an Emmy as part of the team that made "100 Foot Wave," HBO's docuseries about pro surfers braving danger off the coast of Portugal. "I was an assistant effects editor, so I don't get to go to the awards event," she said. "Only the senior engineers get to go. But I get bragging rights."
Although she grew up observing her family's Orthodox Jewish traditions, she no longer practices her faith. She still harbors anger that in the community in which she was raised, abuse was a taboo subject that was swept under the rug. Due in part to her traumatic experience, she does not participate in religious life anymore, she said.
The abuse impacted her life in other ways, she added: "It made me assertive toward those who violate my boundaries."
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"Orthodox women are often told you have to be polite to men who hit on you. We are told to protect men's egos and to be careful not to offend them when rejecting them. But we are never told to shield ourselves from harm."
In her tight-knit community, the message was instilled in her: "Be respectful even if someone is disrespecting you."She paused and rolled her eyes. "That is so wrong."
In retrospect, she said, "I know that what happened to me was not my fault. I was just a kid."
There are lessons in her experience for the broader Orthodox community about how it handles sexual intimidation − and way it disempowers young women, she said.
"Obviously, we have to tell men not to be abusers, but onlookers also can't turn a blind eye," she said. People in her synagogue must have seen that something odd was happening "but they didn't want to know about it or get involved."
Sexual assault can't be a taboo subject if people are to spot the signs of abuse and stop it, she said. "Nobody questioned why a strange man showed up one day and was constantly talking to me and looking at me."
She credits ZA'AKAH, a nonprofit that fights child sex abuse in the Jewish community, as being a rare voice of candor about the problem. "They held a protest in front of Yehudiel's restaurant before anyone was talking about Yehudiel," she said. "And they are very supportive of victims and encourage people who need it to get proper help."
She urges other women to fight back against those who disrespect them.
If she ever has a daughter, Akselrod said, she will never preach obedience to her.
"I'll tell her to `be as loud as you can.'"
Deena Yellin covers religion for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to her work covering how the spiritual intersects with our daily lives, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.
Email: yellin@northjersey.com
Twitter: @deenayellin
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Shalom Yehudiel accuser speaks out about NJ chef, alleged abuse
