and Richard Greenberg
New York (JTA) — How extensive is the problem of clergy sex abuse in the Jewish community? It depends which criteria are used to measure.
One possible gauge is the volume of abuse complaints that have been adjudicated by the ethics panels of the major religious denominations. Judging by the tiny caseload, the problem appears to be negligible — unless such wrongdoing is underreported, as some observers maintain.
Rabbi Richard Hirsh, executive vice president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, counted three or four investigations into rabbinic sexual misconduct since the 300-member organization adopted a new code of ethics in 1999. The code is again being revised.
Rabbi Joel Meyers, executive vice president of the Conservative movement’s 1,600-member Rabbinical Assembly, said in the 17 years he has held his post, three rabbis have been asked to leave the R.A. or left on their own due to “inappropriate behavior” of a sexual nature. This year, one rabbi was expelled.
In addition, the R.A. insisted that “several” other rabbis found to have engaged in “seductive behavior” undergo therapy.
Rabbi Basil Herring, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Council of America, a primarily modern Orthodoxy organization, said the RCA has ruled on so few sexual misconduct complaints over the past 10 years that the number is not statistically significant.
The Union for Reform Judaism, which has 900 member congregations, sees no “particular need” to keep records on the numbers or dispositions of sexual misconduct cases, according to its president, Rabbi Eric Yoffie.
“I don’t happen to believe there’s any evidence of an epidemic of rabbinic sexual abuse,” Yoffie said. “We have to keep it in perspective.”
The Awareness Center, a controversial Baltimore-based Jewish clearinghouse of clergy sex abuse information, lists on its Web site scores of Jewish clergy alleged to be sexual predators. Some of them have been convicted of crimes, but some have not even been charged.
Although authoritative statistics quantifying the problem appear to be nonexistent, “some experts” estimate that “between 18 and 39 percent of Jewish clergy are involved in sexual harassment, sexual exploitation and/or sexual misconduct — the same percentage as non-Jewish clergy,” according to the 2002 book “Sex, Lies, and Rabbis: Breaking a Sacred Trust” written by psychotherapist Charlotte Rolnick Schwab.
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