Queens, NY – To Observe the Shabbat or Not: At Trial, Questions of Religious Devotion

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    Mazoltuv Borukhova Queens, NY – Religion has been a quiet presence in a Queens courtroom during the five-week murder trial of Mazoltuv Borukhova and Mikhail Mallayev, but only rarely has their Jewish faith been the subject of contention. Until last week.

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    On Thursday, Dr. Borukhova was forced to admit that she had violated the Sabbath to inquire about buying a spy camera camouflaged inside a button. But the real trouble started shortly afterward, when the defendants’ insistence on observing the Jewish day of rest conflicted with another inviolate period of repose — namely, the judge’s vacation.

    The Talmudic details of the dispute will be explained shortly. But to understand its power — why, for instance, it produced the first public disagreement between two defendants who have so far resisted any temptation to blame each other for the killing of Dr. Borukhova’s husband in October 2007 — it is necessary to grasp how religious and ethnic identity have pervaded the case.

    The allegations — that Dr. Borukhova hired Mr. Mallayev, her cousin by marriage, to kill her husband, Daniel Malakov, during a bitter custody dispute over their daughter — have scandalized the small community of Bukharian Jews. All three families belong to the ethnic group, which immigrated, almost in its entirety, to the United States from Uzbekistan and other Central Asian countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

    Bukharian Jews preserved their religion for nearly 3,000 years under the Persian Empire, Muslim khanates and Communist rule. They have settled mainly in the Forest Hills section of Queens, clustered around synagogues that are traditional if not ultra-Orthodox — and now find themselves riven by the family feud.

    Both Dr. Borukhova and Mr. Mallayev told the police that they would never be involved in anything illegal because of their religious beliefs.

    Dr. Borukhova’s relatives sit every day in the second row of State Supreme Court, murmuring prayers from books printed in Russian and Hebrew. Dr. Malakov’s relatives occasionally hiss at them across the aisle.

    Covering their hair in accordance with religious rules for married women, Dr. Borukhova’s sisters wear bouffant wigs that became an issue when prosecutors claimed that an eyewitness saw one sister at the murder scene.

    Their mother, who, depending on which side is to be believed, either threatened Dr. Malakov that he would soon “go to God” or merely said the almighty would punish him, opts for a fuzzy cloche hat.

    Mr. Mallayev wore a black leather skullcap and matching jacket early in the trial, but switched to a more staid look: a suit and a velvet yarmulke bearing the Star of David. Earlier, he refused on religious grounds to shave his beard to appear in a lineup, finally agreeing to a shave with an electric razor.

    Until last week, the court had been taking Fridays off. The defendants avoid driving, making phone calls or using electricity on the Jewish Sabbath, which begins at sundown on Friday. To make it back to Rikers Island by then, they would have to leave court so early that Justice Robert J. Hanophy declared at the outset that Friday sessions were not worth the trouble.

    But with the approach of the judge’s vacation — immutably planned for later this month — he has grown less patient. Stemwinding by one of the defense or prosecution prompts him to look heavenward as if begging for help.

    Matters came to a head on Thursday.

    Dr. Borukhova, who has a penchant for recording herself, had testified that she went to Spy Shops in Manhattan the night before the killing to buy a $700 video camera that can be concealed inside a coat button.

    It was a Saturday. So, she said, she asked the shopkeeper to stay late so that she could come after the Sabbath ended at sundown.

    “You take the rules of the Sabbath seriously?” the prosecutor, Brad Leventhal, asked.

    “Unless it’s an emergency.”

    Waving a page of phone records that showed she called the shop on Saturday afternoon, Mr. Leventhal shouted, “Was calling the spy shop at 2:33 in the afternoon an emergency?”

    “Yes, sir,” Dr. Borukhova said.

    “It dealt with your health?” he asked. “Your family’s health?”

    “No,” she replied.

    “So maybe you’re not as religious as you claim to be,” he snapped.

    Justice Hanophy scolded him for being inappropriate. But minutes later, he shocked the defense lawyers by ordering them to sum up their cases the next morning — Friday — not Monday as they expected. That would force them to work overnight and, because the Sabbath-shortened day meant the prosecution would sum up on Monday, give the prosecutors all weekend to perfect their closing.

    “That’s not even close to fair!” objected Dr. Borukhova’s lawyer, Stephen P. Scaring.

    “I’m on a very tight schedule also, you know,” the judge said. The jury cannot start deliberating until after summations. If they take more than a week, they will run into his vacation.

    Mr. Scaring suggested a deal: If summations could wait until Monday to give all sides equal time to prepare, the defendants could promise that if the jury reached a verdict on Friday or Saturday, they would to break the Sabbath to hear it.

    “She did say that she called the spy shop at 2 in the afternoon and that was an emergency,” Justice Hanophy said. “I don’t know if this isn’t an emergency also.”

    Dr. Borukhova said, “I would sooner die.”

    Suddenly, Mr. Mallayev, who had sat stolidly throughout the trial, stirred. He spoke to his co-defendant in public for the first time. He pleaded with her in Russian to agree. She refused.

    Yet minutes later, she agreed to a different violation: The next day, she would stay as late as necessary into Friday night. The prosecutors would sum up that day, too. Both sides would have to cram overnight.

    Spectators were baffled: Why did she agree to a plan that gave her attorney less time but still violated the Sabbath?

    Mr. Scaring worked a late night. But in the end, the Sabbath remained holy.

    Friday morning, Justice Hanophy declared the deal off: Working on the defendants’ sacred day, he worried, could be grounds for an appeal. The prosecutors could wait until Monday after all.

    Mr. Scaring objected, to no avail. He gave his summation, occasionally losing his place.

    But Dr. Borukhova seemed pleased. As she headed back to Rikers, well before sunset, she smiled at Mr. Scaring, and at her sister Sofia Borukhova.

    “Shabbat shalom,” Sofia said, wishing her a peaceful Sabbath.


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    14 Comments
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    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    15 years ago

    CHILLUL HASHEM AD MI’OD

    dovb
    dovb
    15 years ago

    its too much to bear she is an insult to everyones intelligence she thinks everybody is an idiot everythink she said till now was a lie she makes things up to suit her this whole trial is an is a nonevent she is as guily as hell

    Babishka
    Member
    Babishka
    15 years ago

    Maybe she can get married to Yisroel Weingarten in the jailhouse. They deserve each other.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    15 years ago

    They have lost any claim to the right to be shomer shabbos by their behavior. The judge should not be giving them special treatment for fear of reversal on appeal. These individuals are just another in a a growing olam of yiddim whose behavior makes the world think that we are all arrogant ganovim and murderers.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    15 years ago

    She obviously is not as religious as she claims to be.She keeps what suits her. Hiring someone for murder is against Yiddishkeit. If she had real problems with her ex husband over custody of their daughter, surely it could have been solved in a less violent way , and without Shabbos desecration.She has a lot of teshuva to do.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    15 years ago

    this is so sad, … there is a daughter out there without a father,.. and parents who have lost their son. it seems to me that Ms. Borukhova is somewhat unstable,.. which is why there were problems to begin with

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    15 years ago

    You people are judging someone you dont know at all. If this would have been before a bes din, she would not even stand trial. There is no Shlichus L’dvar Avierah. Bottom line she did keep he ground about shabbos and she won a major victory. The fact that she made a phone call on shabbos, is something for itself. She still stood her ground and said “I’d rather die than desecrate the shabbos” that is a Kiddush Hashem and it paid her well. I hope she is found not guilty, let the killer suffer and she is not.

    i say
    i say
    15 years ago

    Did you forget the pictures as both parents were pulling their daughter away from the other spouse. They are not religious. Now that she is only trial, she put a shmatta on her head. Please!!