Focus on Issues: Should Religious Jews Be Held to a Higher Ethical Standard?

Is it right to expect more moral behavior from those who present themselves as religious Jews than from those do not?

The answer depends on which rabbi you ask.

The question arises in the wake of several instances of visible breaches of ethical behavior committed by Jews who call themselves religious.

Among those whose morality has been called into question is a Reform rabbi, who has been the focus of community suspicion in the murder of his wife, though he has neither been arrested nor formally ruled out as a suspect.

On the other end of the religious spectrum are two leaders of a Chasidic community, who were arrested on charges of sexually molesting a teen-age girl, and an Orthodox district attorney, whose financial abuses of his office and marital infidelities were recently exposed when he was charged with breaking the law.

Such crimes are not limited to members of the rabbinate and Orthodox world, of course, but there is much greater interest in such cases when these individuals are involved.

Recognizing that even rabbis need explicit guidance about behaving ethically in financial and sexual matters in complicated times, the Reform movement updated its rabbinic ethics policy in 1991.

And a few months ago, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Assembly adopted its own rabbinic ethics policy on similar matters.

The Conservative movement has no formal policy, though its rules for filing and dealing with a complaint against a rabbi are in the process of being clarified, said Rabbi Joel Meyers, executive vice president of the movement’s Rabbinical Assembly.

For the mainstream Orthodox rabbinical group, the Rabbinical Council of America, the ethics policy is “the laws of the Torah,” said Rabbi Steven Dworken, the group’s executive vice president.

“We presuppose that an Orthodox rabbi doesn’t need more of a policy than that,” he said.

But the current case involving allegations that a rabbi of the Pupa Chasidic sect and his assistant sexually abused a teen-age girl while flying from Australia to Los Angeles, suggests that not every Orthodox Jew follows the Torah so closely.

Rabbi Israel Grunwald, the leader of Congregation Toldos Yakov Yosef in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn, was charged with the federal crime of sexually touching a minor and released on bail until a June 21 hearing.

His assistant, Yehudah Friedlander, was charged with more serious sexual abuse and held until June 8, when he was released on $200,000 bail.

The court was told that he had admitted to federal agents that he had committed some of the acts, which the girl said included forcing his hand under her clothing and repeatedly touching her breast and her vagina despite her entreaties not to, according to news reports.

In addition, Friedlander reportedly pleaded guilty in 1991 to the charge of third-degree sexual abuse in a Monticello, N.Y., case.

A federal magistrate, in initially denying bail, called Friedlander “a danger to the entire community.”

The rabbis’ attorney told reporters that both denied the charges.

The case is clearly getting more attention in the media that it would have had the alleged assailants been nonreligious.

Rabbis of several denomination interviewed said the attention is justified.

According to one Orthodox rabbi, Irving Greenberg, “It is legitimate to expect more” moral behavior from someone presenting himself as religious than from someone who does not, though he noted that “no system, no matter how good, will not have individual failures.”

The fact that Friedlander had allegedly pleaded guilty to sexual abuse several years earlier, yet retained a position of importance and stature within his community, was of concern, Greenberg said.

“Was that behavior treated with the seriousness it deserves or did the `old boys’ close ranks behind him? It raises that question.

“In the Orthodox community there is too much closing ranks and a `no one rock the boat’ mentality,” said Greenberg, president of CLAL — the Jewish Institute for Learning and Leadership.

“There is authoritarian leadership, and dissent is not tolerated. Criticism is seen as disloyalty,” he said.

The spokesman for a fervently Orthodox group, Agudath Israel of America, said he was not so certain that the attention paid to religious Jews’ failings is legitimate.

“The attention paid to them because they’re Chasidim is understandable but lamentable,” said Rabbi Avi Shafran.

“What results from it is the reinforcement of the stereotype that Chasidim are hypocrites. The overwhelming majority of the observant world is people determined to keep to the stringencies of their faith.

“For people to think Chasidim are this way, hiding a darker self, is embarrassing to all of us who wear beards and yarmulkes,” Shafran said.

In another widely publicized case in New York, Rockland County District Attorney Kenneth Gribetz, an Orthodox Jew, quit his post last month shortly before pleading guilty to two misdemeanor counts of defrauding the government in a deal he worked out with the U.S. Attorney.

Although married, a father and grandfather, Gribetz was, in part, done in by his former mistress, who went to the media with information about Gribetz, who had aspirations of becoming a congressman and had been admired by many of his area’s religious Jews.

Rabbi Moshe Tendler, Gribetz’s longtime rabbi, said in an interview that he had often cited Gribetz in his speeches as an illustration of how a devout Jew can remain faithful to the laws of kashrut and Shabbat white pursuing any career – – even one in law and politics.

But evidence police collected from Gribetz’s ex-lover’s home included whips, a dog collar, sex toys and pictures of Gribetz modeling women’s clothing. Their three-year affair apparently included trips they took together funded by taxpayers’ dollars.

Tendler, who organized a meeting of community rabbis to levy sanctions against Gribetz just before his breaches became public, described the former politician’s behavior as a “chilul haShem,” or desecration of God’s name.

His behavior “desecrated, emasculated our Torah. It produces or minimizes the claim of Torah, that this is the divine law fit for the human experience. If someone who had been exposed to Torah does these things, what will people say?” said Tendler.

It is the reverse of what a religious Jew is supposed to do, that “the name of God shall be loved by your actions in Kiddush haShem,” said the rabbi, who is also a professor at Yeshiva University and a respected expert on medical ethics.

When a pulpit rabbi is implicated in a breach of ethics, as was the case with Rabbi Fred Neulander, the spiritual leader of Congregation M’kor Shalom, a Reform temple in Cherry Hill, N.J. it often shines a light on the congregants’ expectations of rabbinic behavior.

Neulander resigned from his position in March, four months after his wife Carol was bludgeoned to death. He had not been arrested, but the police have not ruled him out as a suspect in the on-going investigation.

In addition, the widespread coverage it has received in the local media “has brought to light Neulander’s involvement in marital infidelities,” according to the Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia.

His congregation is reportedly still reeling in shock from the shocking murder and subsequent upheaval.

Is it right to be more profoundly disappointed by rabbis’ failings than those of lay people?

According to Reform Rabbi Eugene Borowitz, “All Jews are expected to behave to a high standard of human conduct. The commandment not to desecrate God’s name falls on all Jews.”

But “if that’s true of all Jews, it’s certainly true of clei kodesh,” or holy vessels, said Borowitz, meaning that those who, when they present themselves as religious Jews and rabbis, have a responsibility for representing the highest ethical standards.

Borowitz is a professor of Jewish religious thought a Hebrew Union College, the Reform movement’s seminary in New York City. He also authored a book titled “Reform Jewish Ethics and the Halacha.”

Leila Gal Berner, a Reconstructionist rabbi and expert on Jewish ethics, said all religious Jews, and especially rabbis, have to guard against “the hubris that come with the moral authority that people give them.”

“When we allow ourselves to fall into a sense of self-importance, moral lapses can happen. In this situation, those involved could have thought that `no one would believe I would do such a thing,'” said Berner, director of the Center for Jewish Ethics at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote, Pa.

“Part of the baggage that comes with being a rabbi or religious Jew is the kavod (honor) people give you,” she said. “It’s very nice but also a burden. With that sense of hubris, then anything goes.”

Sometimes that expectation of a higher plane of behavior is not realistic and not constructive,” she said.