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answer about his father’s ailing health at the time of the alleged sexual abuse.

Gleeson was incredulous. “And you think that was the important part?” he shot back.

Earlier, the rabbi reduced his son to tears during a bizarre cross-examination about a suicide letter the boy had written.

“Is it possible it could get any worse than this?” said the defendant’s legal adviser, Barry Rhodes.

Sexual Abuser Continued

A federal judge refused Monday to allow a rabbi charged with molesting his daughter to turn the courtroom into the “Jerry Springer” show.

The defendant, Israel Weingarten, who is acting as his own attorney, called two grown daughters Monday to testify that it was their mother who was the child molester, not him.

When Weingarten said he planned to call three more children, ages 13 to 18, to take the stand in Brooklyn Federal Court, the judge had enough.

“Your 13-year-old son is going to testify about sexual abuse by your wife?” Judge John Gleeson asked.

Weingarten replied that the boy would testify to physical abuse by his mother.

“I’m not going to permit it,” Gleeson snapped.

Earlier the judge had allowed Weingarten’s daughters Chayeh, 23, and Chaneh, 20, to testify that their mother had sexually abused their older sister, who claims she was repeatedly sodomized by her father starting in 1990 when she was 9 and continuing until she was 18.

Chayeh Weingarten testified her mother had sexually abused the victim and that she was warned by the victim that the Mafia would get her if she came forward.

The defendant is charged with transporting his daughter across international borders for the purpose of committing sexual crimes against her.

In her closing argument, prosecutor Rachel Nash asked the jury to consider the humiliation and embarrassment the victim endured by speaking publicly of the abuse.

The rabbi and his wife are divorced and he has claimed that she fabricated the abuse allegations as part of the bitter breakup.

Weingarten delivered a rambling 90-minute closing argument Tuesday to the jury, who at times during the week-long trial appeared repulsed by his cross-examination of the victim, his ex-wife and son.

“I’m not used to what I’m doing,” Weingarten explained to the jurors. “I had to [represent myself]. I had no other way.”

He suggested his daughter had an intimate relationship with a married man in Antwerp that led her to fabricate the charges against him.

Weingarten, 59, is charged with sexually abusing the victim starting in 1990 when she was 9 until she reached the age of 18.

“Why did this child never bring a tape recorder when this was happening?” he said. “It’s impossible. It’s not true.”

The sordid charges have split the Satmar community, with one faction believing the victim’s claim and others believing she’s lying and that the actual abuser is her mother, according to court papers.

After five hours of deliberations, the jurors asked Judge John Gleeson if they could go home and resume Wednesday.

A Hasidic rabbi who defended himself against charges of molesting his daughter over a seven-year period was convicted on all counts Wednesday by a jury in Brooklyn Federal Court.

The victim, now 27, was escorted into the courtroom by U.S. marshals for the verdict, and sat in the front row opposite six siblings, ages 13 to 23, who support their father Israel Weingarten.

A Brooklyn jury Tuesday began deliberating the fate of a Hasidic rabbi charged with molesting his daughter in New York, Belgium and Israel.

Israel Weingarten faces up to 50 years in prison if he’s convicted of the shocking charges, which were brought in federal court because he is accused of transporting the victim in and out of the country to commit sexual crimes against her.

Acting as his own attorney,