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Tempest in the Temple Neustein - Tempest.indb 1 3 March 2009 4:17:03 PM brandeis series in american jewish history, culture, & life Jonathan D. Sarna, Editor Sylvia Barack Fishman, Associate Editor For a complete list of books that are available in the series, visit www.upne.com Susan G. Solomon Louis I. Kahn’s Jewish Architecture: Mikveh Israel and the Midcentury American Synagogue Amy Neustein, editor Tempest in the Temple: Jewish Communities and Child Sex Scandals Jack Wertheimer, editor Learning and Community: Jewish Supplementary Schools in the Twenty-First Century Carole S. Kessner Marie Syrkin: Values Beyond the Self Leonard Saxe and Barry Chazan Ten Days of Birthright Israel: A Journey in Young Adult Identity Jack Wertheimer, editor Imagining the American Jewish Community Murray Zimiles Gilded Lions and Jeweled Horses: The Synagogue to the Carousel Marianne R. Sanua Be of Good Courage: The American Jewish Committee, 1945–2006 Hollace Ava Weiner and Kenneth D. Roseman, editors Lone Stars of David: The Jews of Texas Jack Wertheimer, editor Jewish Education in an Age of Choice Edward S. Shapiro Crown Heights: Blacks, Jews, and the 1991 Brooklyn Riot Marcie Cohen Ferris and Mark I. Greenberg, editors Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History Neustein - Tempest.indb 2 3 March 2009 4:17:03 PM 4EMPESTINTHE5FNQFTU Edited by 4EMPEST5FNQMF Foreword by . Preface by . Epilogue by . Waltham, Massachuses Published by University Press of New England Hanover and London Neustein - Tempest.indb 3 3 March 2009 4:17:04 PM brandeis university press Published by University Press of New England One Court Street, Lebanon, NH 03766 www.upne.com © 2009 by Brandeis University Press Printed in the United States of America 5 4 3 2 1 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Members of educational institutions and organizations wishing to photocopy any of the work for classroom use, or authors and publishers who would like to obtain permission for any of the material in the work, should contact Permissions, University Press of New England, One Court Street, Lebanon, NH 03766. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tempest in the temple: Jewish communities & child sex scandals / edited by Amy Neustein. — 1st ed. p. cm. — (Brandeis Series in American Jewish History, Culture, and Life) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-58465-671-5 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Child sexual abuse by clergy—United States. 2. Rabbis—Sexual behavior—United States. 3. Authority—Religious aspects—Judaism. 4. Abused children—United States. 5. Jewish ethics. I. Neustein, Amy. hv6570.2.t46 2009 296.3’8—dc22 2008054080 University Press of New England is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper. Neustein - Tempest.indb 4 3 March 2009 4:17:04 PM In memory of rabbi dr. abraham neustein, my beloved father, mentor, and spiritual guide Neustein - Tempest.indb 5 3 March 2009 4:17:04 PM Neustein - Tempest.indb 6 3 March 2009 4:17:04 PM Contents Foreword rabbi dr. elliot n. dorff \ ix Preface rabbi dr. jeremy rosen \ xv Acknowledgments \ xxi Introduction \ 1 part i. breaking vows 1 Unholy Waters How a Massachusetts Synagogue Found Its Way to Shore after a Sex Abuse Scandal, a Prosecution, and a Lawsuit � As Narrated by the Synagogue’s Rabbi and Its Legal Counsel loel weiss & mark itzkowitz \ 13 2 Crossing the Line What Makes a Rabbi Violate Sexual Boundaries � And What Can be Done about It? michelle friedman \ 43 3 Straying the Course Can Jewish and Secular Leadership Archetypes Rein in Religious Leaders? erica brown \ 60 part ii. sacrificing victims 4 Out of the Jewish Closet Facing the Hidden Secrets of Child Sex Abuse � And the Damage Done to Victims joyanna silberg & stephanie dallam \ 77 Neustein - Tempest.indb 7 3 March 2009 4:17:04 PM 5 A Community of Co-enablers Why Are Jews Ignoring Traditional Jewish Law by Protecting the Abuser? mark dratch \ 105 6 The Fugitive and the Forgotten Cracking the Cold Case of Rabbi Avrohom Mondrowitz michael lesher \ 126 7 My Cross to Bear How I Challenged the Catholic Church Hierarchy to Atone for Their Sins against Me and Other Abuse Victims barbara blaine \ 163 part iii. let me know the way 8 Justice Interrupted How Rabbis Can Interfere with the Prosecution of Sex Offenders � And Strategies for How to Stop Them amy neustein & michael lesher \ 197 9 Pedophiles and Penitence Whom to Banish, Whom to Support � Helping Jewish Communities Make the Right Choices robert weiss \ 230 Epilogue professor dane s. claussen \ 253 Contributors \ 263 Index \ 265 Neustein - Tempest.indb 8 3 March 2009 4:17:04 PM rabbi dr. elliot n. dorff Foreword I was as uninformed and naïve about child sexual abuse as virtually everyone else. I had had the good fortune of having terrific parents, and even though I knew as I was growing up that some of my Jewish friends had more issues with their parents than I did with mine, none of what they complained about even approached sexual abuse. It was completely off the radar screen. The same was true for all the Jewish families that I knew as my wife and I were raising our own children. Then, in 1993, when California law changed to make teachers mandated reporters of child abuse, the University of Judaism (now the American Jewish University) and Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles (jfs) jointly published Shalom Bayit: A Jewish Response to Child Abuse and Domestic Violence, edited by Dr. Ian Russ, Sally Weber, and Ellen Ledley, to inform teachers in Jew- ish schools about the requirements of the new law, how to recognize abuse, and what to do about it when you saw evidence of it. The editors asked me to write an essay on Judaism and sexual abuse as part of that book, and the research for writing that essay was my first foray into this entire area. Yes, I knew that among its more than sixty programs, jfs, of which I was a board member at the time and later president, runs two shelters for battered women and children, but I thought that this was a project that jfs had undertaken as a service to the general community, for we were told in a report to the board several months earlier that at that time none of the residents of those facili- ties were Jews. This just confirmed my mistaken impression that child sexual abuse simply does not happen among Jews. How wrong I was. In consulting with the editors, all of whom were therapists who had direct experience in counseling survivors of abuse, I found out that domestic abuse of all sorts existed in the Jewish community, including the sexual abuse of children, that it affected people affiliated with Neustein - Tempest.indb 9 3 March 2009 4:17:04 PM all denominations of Judaism and secular Jews as well, and that it ran across all levels of income and education. Although solid statistics about the preva- lence of this phenomenon among Jews are hard to come by, there seems to be no reason to presume that Jews are any less affected by this than the general population, that as many as one in four girls and one in six boys are sexually abused before reaching the age of eighteen, most between ages seven and thirteen. Shocking and depressing, to say the least. My heart ached for these children that I had never met. For that reason, I decided to continue the research that I had done to write the short article for the uj/jfs project and ultimately wrote a long rabbinic ruling dealing with all aspects of family violence. Specifically, I described and defined the types of abuse and their Jewish legal, moral, and theological status; and I indicated how a Conservative approach to Jewish law has an important effect on how we can and should interpret and apply traditional Jewish law in responding to abuse. I then analyzed from a Conservative Jewish legal point of view the issues involved in spousal abuse, child abuse, and parental abuse, including sexual abuse and verbal abuse as well as nonsexual physical abuse. I dealt with the reasons victims of abuse often fail to report abuse or get help to extricate themselves from it, including their reticence to defame the perpetra- tor and the family, shame and misplaced feelings of guilt, and the traditional ban on informing civil authorities. I described the duties of witnesses to abuse; I discussed the obligations of the abuser to get help to stop abusing others and to make amends to the greatest extent possible; and, finally, I wrote about the degree to which the Jewish community has a duty to enable abusers to return to the good graces of the community (while still protecting everyone from possible further abuse) and the role of rabbis, educators, and lay leaders in all aspects of this issue in our community. My ruling was approved by the Con- servative Movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards in September 1995, and then distributed in hard copy by mail to each and every Conservative rabbi. It now is available to anyone who wants to read it on both the Internet and in book form, and it has become the basis of the work done within the Conservative Jewish community to inform both rabbis and lay people of this phenomenon and to teach them how to respond to it.1 It is from the perspective of that experience, then, that I read the manu- script of this book.