CALIFORNIA
JWeekly
by drew himmelstein, j. staff
A few years ago, Congregation Beth Jacob faced a situation without precedent in the Redwood City synagogue: a teenage student working as an aide in a religious school classroom was accused of inappropriately touching two young girls.
“My community was rocked,” said Rabbi Nathaniel Ezray. “I’m sometimes amazed about how we’re ill-prepared for things we need to be prepared for.”
The experience provided a quick education for the congregation, which reported the situation to authorities and consulted with an outside expert for guidance in handling it. The synagogue now has explicit guidelines for those who work with children. Still, several years later, the pain hasn’t gone away.
“I think that trauma takes a long time to resolve,” Ezray said. “I think people think it was dealt with thoughtfully.”
Handling the delicate, troubling and painful issue of child sexual abuse is challenging for any synagogue, where staff members typically are not experts on such matters. Clergy and administrators may suddenly find themselves in the unexpected position of making reports to legal authorities, counseling the families of victims, protecting the rights and privacy of the accused and rethinking safety and hiring policies.
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