Jew4Life
07-11-2005, 11:39 PM
A Fight Over Faith
Moshe Aronov’s children were living Jewish lives in the Queens Bukharan community before his ex-wife converted to Islam and spirited them away. Now their fate is uncertain.
Aronov, said that when he visited the 102nd Precinct on April 2, and during three subsequent visits over the next 10 days, the police would only fill out domestic incident reports.
Moshe Aronov vividly recalls the day six months ago when he thought he got his children back.
It was shortly after a state Supreme Court judge awarded him full custody of his 6-year-old boy and 4-year-old girl, ending a bitter custody battle with his ex-wife, a convert to Islam.
During a weekend visit to Aronov’s home, his son turned to him and said, “I can’t wait to come to live in your house, Papa, so that I can be a Jew all the time.”
Choking back tears, Aronov gave the child a broad smile and said, “You will soon.”
But for Aronov and his children, that day has not yet come — and may not come for some time.
According to New York Police Department sources, on April 25, four days after Judge Mary Ellen Fitzmaurice awarded Aronov custody, his ex-wife boarded a plane with the children and flew to a location outside the United States, where she apparently still is today.
The case involving Aronov, 35, a mutual fund wholesaler from Forest Hills, and his ex-wife, Pnina Siovnov, 28, an unemployed phlebotomist, elicits heightened passions in the tight-knit Bukharan Jewish community of central Queens, where both have been members, because Siovnov converted to Islam shortly after separating from Aronov in 2003. Siovnov expressed in court a desire to raise the couple’s children as Muslims.
Aronov’s attorney, Donald Schechter, charged that Siovnov “was able to manipulate the U.S. criminal justice system” in escaping the country “and is now in a position to indoctrinate my client’s children to become Muslims.”
Siovnov’s former attorney, Joel Hashinsky, refused to comment on the case. Efforts to reach Siovnov were unsuccessful.
An anguished Aronov believes there were “serious failures in the system” that made it possible for Siovnov to take the children. (Aronov asked that his children not be named in this story.)
He faults prominent Bukharan rabbis, who Aronov said declined to intervene after Siovnov pulled the children out of Jewish schools, possibly fearful of offending his ex-wife’s socially prominent family.
He indicts the principal of a Queens public school who prevented Aronov from removing his son from school several hours before Siovnov disappeared with the children.
And he is angry at the Police Department, which waited 18 days after Aronov attempted to file a kidnapping charge on April 22 against Siovnov at the 102nd Precinct in Richmond Hill, Queens, before opening an investigation.
Aronov, a Uzbekistan native who moved with his parents to Forest Hills at the age of 9, and Siovnov, who was born in Israel and came here as a girl, were married in a lavish Bukharan community wedding in 1997.
When the couple separated in April 2003, Aronov agreed not to contest custody and to pay child support. Aronov was to have the children on weekends and Jewish holidays.
Siovnov moved out of the couple’s Forest Hills condominium and relocated several miles away, not far from the Richmond Hill apartment of Shahazad Sheik, 41, a Pakistan-born former co-worker at the phlebotomy lab with whom she developed a close friendship.
Two months after the couple separated, Aronov filed for sole custody of the children after Siovnov announced in court that she had converted to Islam and intended to raise the children as Muslims.
“I was outraged when Pnina announced she wanted the children to become Muslims,” said Aronov. “From that point on, I was fighting to save my children as Jews.”
Siovnov soon pulled the couple’s son out of the Yeshiva of Central Queens and daughter out of a day-care center under Jewish auspices. She enrolled the boy in a public school in Richmond Hill and kept the daughter at home.
During the ensuing 20 months, Siovnov took the children to mosque every Friday with Sheik and his wife, Maria, a Philippine-born convert to Islam, and arranged for them to receive instruction in the Koran.
Siovnov acknowledged to her estranged husband that she encouraged the children to call Sheik “father” and allowed him to use corporal punishment on them, according to court papers.
Sheik, 41, who is unemployed and suffering from neurological disorders, denied he was ever Siovnov’s lover.
“I have no relationship with her,” he told The Jewish Week. “I have a wife and three children.”
Sheik also denied that he influenced Siovnov to become Muslim, saying that “no one can influence anyone to change their religion.” Sheik insisted he had nothing to do with Siovnov’s disappearance and is unaware where she went.
Tensions between Aronov and Siovnov were evident immediately in the custody case in state Supreme Court in Queens. In the summer of 2003, the then-presiding judge, Darrell Gavrin, ruled that Aronov, Siovnov and the children should be evaluated by a court-appointed psychologist.
Siovnov broke several appointments to see Dr. Robert Kassoff, saying in court through her attorney that she preferred not to meet with Kassoff because he was Jewish. Gavrin, “outraged” by the argument, ordered that Siovnov immediately arrange to meet with Kassoff.
cont. bellow...
Moshe Aronov’s children were living Jewish lives in the Queens Bukharan community before his ex-wife converted to Islam and spirited them away. Now their fate is uncertain.
Aronov, said that when he visited the 102nd Precinct on April 2, and during three subsequent visits over the next 10 days, the police would only fill out domestic incident reports.
Moshe Aronov vividly recalls the day six months ago when he thought he got his children back.
It was shortly after a state Supreme Court judge awarded him full custody of his 6-year-old boy and 4-year-old girl, ending a bitter custody battle with his ex-wife, a convert to Islam.
During a weekend visit to Aronov’s home, his son turned to him and said, “I can’t wait to come to live in your house, Papa, so that I can be a Jew all the time.”
Choking back tears, Aronov gave the child a broad smile and said, “You will soon.”
But for Aronov and his children, that day has not yet come — and may not come for some time.
According to New York Police Department sources, on April 25, four days after Judge Mary Ellen Fitzmaurice awarded Aronov custody, his ex-wife boarded a plane with the children and flew to a location outside the United States, where she apparently still is today.
The case involving Aronov, 35, a mutual fund wholesaler from Forest Hills, and his ex-wife, Pnina Siovnov, 28, an unemployed phlebotomist, elicits heightened passions in the tight-knit Bukharan Jewish community of central Queens, where both have been members, because Siovnov converted to Islam shortly after separating from Aronov in 2003. Siovnov expressed in court a desire to raise the couple’s children as Muslims.
Aronov’s attorney, Donald Schechter, charged that Siovnov “was able to manipulate the U.S. criminal justice system” in escaping the country “and is now in a position to indoctrinate my client’s children to become Muslims.”
Siovnov’s former attorney, Joel Hashinsky, refused to comment on the case. Efforts to reach Siovnov were unsuccessful.
An anguished Aronov believes there were “serious failures in the system” that made it possible for Siovnov to take the children. (Aronov asked that his children not be named in this story.)
He faults prominent Bukharan rabbis, who Aronov said declined to intervene after Siovnov pulled the children out of Jewish schools, possibly fearful of offending his ex-wife’s socially prominent family.
He indicts the principal of a Queens public school who prevented Aronov from removing his son from school several hours before Siovnov disappeared with the children.
And he is angry at the Police Department, which waited 18 days after Aronov attempted to file a kidnapping charge on April 22 against Siovnov at the 102nd Precinct in Richmond Hill, Queens, before opening an investigation.
Aronov, a Uzbekistan native who moved with his parents to Forest Hills at the age of 9, and Siovnov, who was born in Israel and came here as a girl, were married in a lavish Bukharan community wedding in 1997.
When the couple separated in April 2003, Aronov agreed not to contest custody and to pay child support. Aronov was to have the children on weekends and Jewish holidays.
Siovnov moved out of the couple’s Forest Hills condominium and relocated several miles away, not far from the Richmond Hill apartment of Shahazad Sheik, 41, a Pakistan-born former co-worker at the phlebotomy lab with whom she developed a close friendship.
Two months after the couple separated, Aronov filed for sole custody of the children after Siovnov announced in court that she had converted to Islam and intended to raise the children as Muslims.
“I was outraged when Pnina announced she wanted the children to become Muslims,” said Aronov. “From that point on, I was fighting to save my children as Jews.”
Siovnov soon pulled the couple’s son out of the Yeshiva of Central Queens and daughter out of a day-care center under Jewish auspices. She enrolled the boy in a public school in Richmond Hill and kept the daughter at home.
During the ensuing 20 months, Siovnov took the children to mosque every Friday with Sheik and his wife, Maria, a Philippine-born convert to Islam, and arranged for them to receive instruction in the Koran.
Siovnov acknowledged to her estranged husband that she encouraged the children to call Sheik “father” and allowed him to use corporal punishment on them, according to court papers.
Sheik, 41, who is unemployed and suffering from neurological disorders, denied he was ever Siovnov’s lover.
“I have no relationship with her,” he told The Jewish Week. “I have a wife and three children.”
Sheik also denied that he influenced Siovnov to become Muslim, saying that “no one can influence anyone to change their religion.” Sheik insisted he had nothing to do with Siovnov’s disappearance and is unaware where she went.
Tensions between Aronov and Siovnov were evident immediately in the custody case in state Supreme Court in Queens. In the summer of 2003, the then-presiding judge, Darrell Gavrin, ruled that Aronov, Siovnov and the children should be evaluated by a court-appointed psychologist.
Siovnov broke several appointments to see Dr. Robert Kassoff, saying in court through her attorney that she preferred not to meet with Kassoff because he was Jewish. Gavrin, “outraged” by the argument, ordered that Siovnov immediately arrange to meet with Kassoff.
cont. bellow...