settled on a legal team that was extremely professional and advo- cated forcefully on behalf of the mother. From that point forward, we achieved one success after another, but even as we won battle after battle, the father refused to give up. Every time there was a vic- tory, there was an appeal.” The father was so opposed to Orthodox Judaism that he refused to allow the children to daven or keep kosher.
One of the precedents that the Agudah wanted to establish was a child’s right to freedom of religion. The young man mentioned above, who was the last child to remain in his father’s custody, wanted to live a life as an Orthodox Jew. However, he was still not yet 18 years old. The question was, could a minor have a say in the religion that he practiced? The Agudah wrote an amicus curiae brief in the case. Joining them in the amicus were a number of prominent law professors. “The amicus was signed off on not by just our natural allies, but also by other members of the legal community who were interested in women’s rights and children’s rights.” But getting the amicus curiae into the court
was a problem. To get it in needed the Chinese- Kansas connection. Yes, you read that right.
M
eeting Moshe (Mitchell) Silk for the first time, the word “Chinese” wouldn’t spring to mind. A dapper bearded Ashkenazi man, he dresses in Hasidic levush (garb) on Shabbos. He has no epicanthic folds. He speaks an unaccented English, and he’s a native of Chicago.
But Silk is fluent in both the Mandarin and Cantonese dialects of Chinese, and is an expert in Chinese law, particularly banking law. He presently practices as a partner at the interna- tional law firm Allen and Overy, and has many clients in China. He previously taught law in several Chinese
universities. That’s very Chinese, I would say. Interestingly, Silk learned Chinese in Florida, where he grew up. “I started work at a young age, and one of
my first jobs was working in a Chinese restau- rant. A Chinese family had moved into our neighborhood. They didn’t speak English, and I helped them out. “I worked at their restaurant, and over a six- year period I picked up Cantonese. I later learned that only five percent of people in China speak Cantonese; the vast majority speaks Mandarin, so I had learned the wrong dialect.”
After that he learned Mandarin, and focused his college studies on law and Asian studies, and then studied Chinese law, eventually study-
(Right): Attorney Moshe (Mitchell) Silk (foreground), who has logged countless hours doing pro bono work for LSS and whose “Chinese connection” was a huge help in the successful outcome of a child custody case in Kansas, and Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zweibel, Agudath Israel executive vice president.
(Left): Kansas Attorney
Eugene Balloun, a Methodist whose intervention through the LSS helped a mother get back custody of her son. Krausz writes that “the prestigious attorney has expended hundreds of hours toward this case, with an astonishing amount of legal work provided at a substantially reduced fee.”
for the IT people at his firm to set up a database that would keep track of all of the lawyers in the network, the data from the calls that the Agudah receives and the actual flow of the cases as they are being pursued in court. “Part of my idea was to marshal more resources than just the lawyers in the community. What I mean by that is, take for example my firm, Allen and Overy. We probably contribute to the commu- nity, in terms of the time cost to us in hours of our lawyers, some- where in the region of tens of thou- sands of dollars pro bono work a year for Agudah cases. A lot of
‘Most of the cases revolve around end-of-life issues; employment issues, where an employee is being discriminated against; and matrimonial, primarily child custody cases.’
ing in a Chinese college. Silk was sent to Hong Kong in 1992 by the
law firm he was working for, and ended up liv- ing there for 13 years. He first became acquainted with Mordechai Biser when he became involved in a custody case in Hong Kong. Biser helped significantly with the case.
When Moshe Silk moved back to the U.S. in 2005, he had a bit of a void in his life; he had been a high-level communal activist in Hong Kong, involved in many of the community institutions. He became involved in the Agudah’s pro bono legal network, impressed as he was by Mordechai Biser’s work.
“I started to take a lot of the custody cases, and on top of my heavy plate of commercial and interna- tional matters, I would fre- quently run down to family court in Brooklyn.”
There is something amazing about the idea of a lawyer who normally deals with million-dollar finan- cial deals litigating custody cases in family court, just for the mitzvah. “After having worked on a couple of cases and spo- ken with Rabbi Biser, it appeared to me that he was immensely overwhelmed. I felt that we should really try to harness the resources of our community in a better
There is something amazing about the idea of a lawyer who normally deals with million-dollar financial deals litigating custody cases in family court, just for the mitzvah.
way that could fill the really great demand of the community. “So I worked with Mordechai Biser and few others, mainly Bruce [Listhaus], to formally organize the LSS. We incorporated as a not-for- profit and formed two boards. One is a nation- al oversight board that deals with general mat- ters of policy, and we got some very impressive people on that board. Then we have a day-to- day board, where we have about eight lawyers, all from New York, who deal with the daily work of the LSS.”
Besides spearheading the incorporation and organization of the LSS, Moshe also arranged
that is work I do; I normally bill out at over 900 dollars an hour, not a penny of which is charged to clients. But a lot of work is done by other lawyers. For example, a certain rebbe recently lost his 501(c)3 status; he wouldn’t be able to collect if not for that, so I had one of our tax lawyers working on that. We had a case where we needed to file an amicus brief in an appeal, so I had one of our litigators working on that.
“My feeling is that if we were to look at 60 to 100 of the city’s medium to large law firms, there would invariably be one or more frum partners at each of these firms. What we’re try- ing to do is get a frum person to act like I do at Allen and Overy, as the point person in their firm, and leverage off of that. It’s like having an axle and spokes; if you have an axle at each firm, that axle will have any number of spokes who are the lawyers that could be available, who don’t need to be Jewish, and if they are Jewish, don’t need to be frum. They can push continued on next page
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Break Week Fun! 14 fun, play- based exhibits
•Early Childhood Programs—music and movement, literature and art
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Opening January 27—The Mystery of the Mayan Medallion exhibit!
11 Davis Avenue, Garden City, NY 11530 • 516-224-5800 •
www.licm.org On Charles Lindbergh Blvd. (Museum Row) near the Nassau Coliseum
Long Island Children’s Museum JEWISH TRIBUNE • JANUARY 20-26, 2012 9
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