BishopAccountability.org
	Why Rabbis Sin By Jeremy Rosen Haaretz January 14, 2010 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1142736.html One could be forgiven for thinking that this past year was a very bad one for Orthodox Judaism. Across the Jewish world, one scandal followed another: corrupt and criminal activity among kosher slaughterers and kashrut supervisors, drug smuggling, theft and other illegal financial practices, racial discrimination, sexual abuse, some rabbis recorded demanding sex for conversions and others taking drugs and employing prostitutes. One after another, the headlines have reiterated a sad litany of corruption among Orthodox Jews, in many cases among their rabbinical leaders. None of this is new; it has been going on for a very long time. But for someone as committed to Torah as I am, this phenomenon represents, far more than theological issues, the most serious of challenges to faith. I am tired of making excuses. Once I would argue that 2,000 years of oppression, hatred and exclusion had taught the Jews to do whatever they needed to survive. Or, I would note that much of Orthodox Jewry nowadays is barely a generation removed from life in an Eastern Europe where the state was an enemy and everyone had to break the rules in order to evade the discriminatory regimes. In Israel, one could put the blame on David Ben-Gurion, for not having separated religion and state, which in effect encouraged the Orthodox to indulge in all the temptations that accompany political power. But as with attempts to rationalize terrorism, you go through the obvious list of justifications - poverty, alienation, discrimination - and then you find perpetrators who have suffered none of the above. Daily, we Orthodox repeat mantras about justice, charity and kindness in our prayers, and the more we seem to spout them, the less many of us seem to pay any attention to translating the words into actions. Catholicism might chalk it up to original sin, explaining that we are all corrupt by nature. Judaism, however, tells us that we are not necessarily evil, but influenced from birth by two inclinations, one to do the right thing and the other to do what is wrong, and we can give priority to one over the other. So why do so many of us ignore our own rules and standards? Is being religious, perhaps, just a social phenomenon, an accident of birth, a system of habit, norms and customs carried out without thought or spiritual significance? After all, even though observance is intended to promote moral behavior and allows for repentance, most people only pay lip service to that. Some people do change. But the vast majority are the same after Yom Kippur as they were the day before. One could also argue that some people are simply genetically disposed to be more concupiscent, greedy and immoral than others, just as others seem to be more naturally saintly. We all struggle against our evil inclinations, and some people appear to have it easier than others. But there are other factors at play here. Wherever you have a self-perpetuating oligarchy, its members come to see themselves as above the law. Just as a regime of men usually discriminates against women. This is why the unfair laws of divorce in Judaism have still not been modified to remove the disgrace of male chauvinists who can blackmail their wives over a get. When a majority of rabbis turn a blind eye, claiming they can do nothing, they are really encouraging the process of coercion, providing easy outs to the men while refusing to budge for the women. Add to that the superstition factor - and a tendency to attribute superhuman powers to certain rabbis, so that many then fear crossing them - and you have additional opportunities for corruption. It may be true that every religion has a similar problem, but that's no excuse. I don't deny the goodness, charity and spirituality that do exist within Orthodoxy, but I am concerned about so many who let the side down, and an automatic tendency of authority to blame the messenger. Considering how religions seem incapable or unwilling to police themselves, what is the solution? Shedding constant and consistent light on the murky recesses of religious corruption, I would sugest. Most humans behave far better when they think they are being observed. If rabbis who are charlatans, predators, thieves and hypocrites know they are likely to be exposed, they might think twice about what they do. As it is, though, Orthodoxy tends to protect them, claiming wrongly that exposure breaches the laws of gossip and lashon hara. Religious leadership tends to close ranks, often blaming the victims or exonerating the perpetrators. Recent ads in the Orthodox press even claim that those convicted of fraud are like "captives" who must be freed. All closed groups behave this way, not only Orthodox Jews. This is precisely why Israel's Supreme Court is so unpopular with the Haredi world - and so necessary, because it will recognize no such defenses. It is why a free press, and now the Internet too, is so important, and why public opinion must not let even outwardly pious criminals get away with their wrongdoings. This is why a code of human rights must coexist alongside Torah. It shouldn't need to, since Torah requires justice and righteousness. But when we see the outwardly observant betraying their core values while Orthodoxy stands idly by, we need the checks and balances that a universal system of legal ethics mandates. Jeremy Rosen is a rabbi and writer. He lives in New York and blogs at jeremyrosen.com/blog.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.