Do Not Jump To Judgement. Make Haste to Mend One's Ways.

By Rabbi Alan Yuter

 

Question:  How should the Orthodox community respond to the accusations of sexual impropriety of Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt, who is accused of improper approach to young men in the male shvits, the public bathhouse?

 

 

1. No one is guilty, neither rabbi or layperson, professional or client, Jew or Gentile, man or woman, unless and until that person is proven to be guilty.

 

2. "Modesty" is not just about what women are obliged to  cover, it is  also about what men reveal about themselves. I once heard an Orthodox rabbi preach that narcissism is necessary for a rabbi. How does this disposition square with walking humbly before God? [Micah 6:8]

 

3.  We may pass no judgment on any matter until the facts are known and processed without bias. [Hoshen Mishpat 7:7, 10:1 and 17:1and 5]

 

4. Our Rabbinic fraternity would, however, do well to pro-actively set standards of Rabbinic practice. Rambam De’ot 5, especially 5:8, might be a good place to start. Were De'ot 5:6, which forbids the Jewish scholar/aristocrat/gentleman from appearing before others in a state of indignity or undress, in force in the world we inhabit and enshrined in our sensibility, this problematic episode could have been avoided. I'm often told, "we do not decide the Law according to Rambam." Perhaps we should reconsider this anti-Maimonidean policy. When we broadcast, intentionally or otherwise,  that “the rabbi is always right,” we wrongly diminish our moral authority as exemplars and advocates of ethical elegance. The Torah as we have it is not given in Ashkenazi or Sefardi versions. In the introduction to his compendium, Maimonides says that we follow the view that makes the most sense. Religious Jews are rational, critical thinkers who  ask, “what is the right and the good,” not obedient robots who are ordered by elites “to obey and do as we say you should.” 

 

5. The contemporary cases of modern Orthodox Rabbis Lanner, Freundel, Finkelstein, and Gordon, taken together, reveal that we are often seen to be more concerned with saving face than saving souls, protecting buddies, institutions and jobs before we worry about protecting innocents. The passage that screams to me is “place God[‘s Presence]  before me at all times.”[Psalms 16:8]  Being “religious” looks more like being a member of a social club and less like adherents of a mission with an Ultimate Concern.
R. Herschel Schachter teaches that we have to ask ourselves, “what would my rebbe say if he were confronted with such a scenario?”  I only met Rav Soloveitchik once. But I have read his work extensively. Given Rabbis Zeigler’s, Rakeffet’s, and Holcer’s archival reports [this last writer’s volume, entitled “Thinking aloud” is homophonic to “Thinking allowed”], given the dogged, resolved, passionate integrity he exhibited when cleaning Boston’s Kashrut industry, I cannot imagine him not thundering against these “weeds in our own [modern Orthodox] garden,” alluding to Rabbi Lamm’s response to Baruch Goldstein’s massacre in a mosque.

 

6. We should not have allowed Prof. Marci Hamilton of YU's [secular!] Law School to be the only YU faculty voice regarding sexual harassment on the part of YU's rabbinic staff.

 

7. Rambam’s De’ot 5:1 tells us Orthodox rabbis when we should be fanatics, extremists, and fundamentalists: all of our actions “should be fine and proper in the extreme.”

 

8.  If Orthodox rabbis realize that they are God’s ambassadors to the Jewish people, they would be careful  to carry themselves with the requisite dignity. Rather than ask what licenses may I take, we must ask “what standards must I maintain.” Before complaining about women wearing tefillin, as did Rabbi Rosenblatt, rabbis should rather be extremely strict when presenting themselves as Torah’s exemplary incarnation.

 

9. Just as seeing the Sota should remind us to be extremely sensitive to wrongdoing, Rabbi Rosenblatt’s problems should remind us that social propriety is a necessary condition of ethical piety