Rabbi Yosef Feldman resigns from Yeshiva Centre board

By Jane Lee
Sydney Morning Herald
February 11, 2015

http://www.smh.com.au/national/rabbi-yosef-feldman-resigns-from-yeshiva-centre-board-20150211-13bpkm.html

A Sydney rabbi who told a royal commission that he had not known in 2002, when he was the administrative director of a rabbinical college, that it was illegal for an adult to touch a child's genitals has resigned.

A senior Orthodox rabbi has resigned from the board of the Yeshiva Centre in Sydney amid revelations he did not know that touching a child's genitals could be a criminal offence.

Rabbi Yosef Feldman this week appeared before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Melbourne to give evidence on the centre's response to child abuse allegations against its employees. He has said that Jews who know of abuse allegations should report them to their rabbi before going to the police.

Rabbi Feldman, previously also the administrative director of the centre's rabbinical college, resigned from the centre's board of management on Wednesday.

"I apologise to anyone in the rabbinate, the Jewish community and the wider Australian community who may have been embarrassed or ashamed by my views, words, understandings, recordings or emails about child sexual abuse or any other matter," he told Jewish news service J-Wire.

A spokesman for Yeshiva Centre, Rabbi Feldman's brother, Eli Feldman, confirmed the resignation, saying this included all administrative duties. Rabbi Feldman would still be able to teach voluntarily at the centre and was still employed as a rabbi at Southern Sydney Synagogue and as a kosher supervisor.

It is believed a large number of members of the Jewish community had called for Rabbi Yosef Feldman's resignation after he gave evidence at the royal commission.

Editor of the Australian Jewish News, Zeddy Lawrence, said the resignation was "a watershed for the community and given the backlash within the community, lessons have been learned".

Many Jews, including those not part of the orthodox community, had been shocked and embarrassed by allegations of cover-ups, revealed at the Royal Commission, Mr Lawrence said.

"There were certain senior people in the Jewish community who held those views and prioritised the welfare of perpetrators and their institutions over the welfare of victims and sadly that's all coming to light now," he said.

The Commission would teach the few remaining rabbis "who may have believed it was wrong to report to police ... that they are wrong and can no longer hold or encourage others to hold those views."

Rabbi Feldman said he had dedicated his life to protecting people in need, including abuse victims and children, and that it pained him to think his words had upset victims. He vowed to be "more careful" with his words in future.

The Yeshiva Centre thanked Rabbi Feldman for his "years of selfless dedication" in a statement and said it was committed to protecting victims "including full compliance with authorities and legal procedures.".

The rabbi told the commission on Monday that the media's coverage of child sex abuse "encourages even people who may not be real victims or may want to be considered heroes" to report to police, ABC reported.

His lawyer also told the commission that Rabbi Feldman had received death threats since Friday, when he said that when he was the administrative director of the centre's rabbinical college in 2002, he did not know it was illegal for an adult to touch the genitals of a child. 

When asked, he said: "I didn't know that as a fact."

Counsel assisting the commission, Maria Gerace, last week also read out a number of emails Rabbi Feldman wrote to fellow rabbis to argue that people who had heard a child had been abused should tell a rabbi first and "even if [the allegations are] justified we as a Jewish community could be able to be seen to have a stronger approach to deal with it than the goyim [non-Jews]".

The emails were written at a time when he was concerned that his then-friend and now convicted child sex offender David Cyprys was being "vilified" by the media amid abuse allegations.

The Australian Jewish News called for Rabbi Feldman's resignation as president of the Rabbinical Council of NSW in 2011 after the emails emerged.

Rabbi Feldman also told the commission that he had not received formal training on child abuse since 2002, when he and his father had failed to report to police that a teacher had left Australia amid child abuse allegations. He said last week that training was not a "very high priority" for him given that detecting and responding to child abuse was largely a matter of "common sense".

In his statement on Wednesday, he said: "I commit to undertake formal training and education on how to identify, handle and report abuse allegations."