The rabbi pinned the dentist with a dental chair. The dentist tried to spear the rabbi with a fishing pole. So went the accusations in an odd trial reported in Newsday newspaper this week.
According to the report, Morris Talansky, a 76-year-old Orthodox rabbi and businessman from Woodmere, NY, was found not guilty of assaulting Leonard Barashick, D.D.S., an 85-year-old general dentist, at Baldwin dental lab in Long Beach, NY, in 2007.
The dispute apparently began over the bill for bridgework that Dr. Barashick performed for Talansky. Everyone agrees that the discussion got rather tense. But, the newspaper reported, District Court Judge William O'Brien ruled that prosecutors had not proved that Talansky bruised the dentist by pinning him to a wall with a dental chair.
Key testimony reportedly came from laboratory employees who remembered seeing Dr. Barashick approach the rabbi wielding a fishing pole "like a bayonet" and muttering about having served in the military.
For closer readers of the news, Newsday pointed out, this is the same Morris Talansky who was at the center of the Israeli government kickback scandal that resulted in the downfall of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
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