When Rabbis Go Astray (sidebar to Part 3): Rabbinical Seminaries Offer Scant Training on Sexual Ethi

WHEN RABBIS GO ASTRAY [Sidebar to Part 3]: Rabbinical seminaries offer. scant training on sexual ethics

When it comes to training rabbis in sexual ethics, most of the seminaries of America score an incomplete.

The four major rabbinical seminaries — the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary and the Orthodox Yeshiva University — do not offer their students any full courses devoted specifically to issues of rabbinic sexual ethics and behavior.

Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York runs a single- session seminar for senior students on ethical conduct that focuses largely on sexual conduct, said Rabbi Larry Raphael, who recently left HUC, where he worked as the dean of administration.

There is no course or seminar devoted to rabbinic sexual ethics at the Conservative movement’s JTS, said Dr. Samuel Klagsbrun, chairman and professor of pastoral psychiatry at the seminary.

The issue comes up, however, in his courses on pastoral education, which are optional, and in part of a seminar devoted to personal conduct, Klagsbrun said.

“We teach Talmud and Shulchan Aruch, and we still don’t do a very good job in helping rabbis to learn the ropes of real life issues,” he said.

At the Orthodox movement’s Yeshiva University, the issue of “appropriate rabbinic relationships with laity” is addressed in a pastoral psychology course which is very popular with rabbinical students, though not required, said Rabbi Robert Hirt, vice president of Yeshiva’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary.

At the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College students are required to take a daylong seminar devoted to sexual harrassment, said Rabbi David Teutsch, president of the college.

“Because it’s a relationship of trust and power, and often of intimate knowledge of people’s lives, the role of rabbi creates vastly increased responsibility for maintaining proper boundaries in relationships,” he said.

The college also runs an annual seminar devoted to sexuality and gender issues, and requires students to take counseling courses which examine boundary issues for clergy.

Last year an RRC student was expelled for sexually harassing other students, Teutsch said.

“If the college doesn’t model high standards and their clear enforcement, and work to create a sense of safety and openness around these issues, then where will rabbinical students learn how to create that sense of moral responsibility and safety inside the institutions where they are leaders later?” he said.