I’ve been thinking a lot about responsibility recently. One of the areas that I’ve been grappling with relates to the recent presidential election and what responsibility, if any, my modern Orthodox community had beyond what many declared to be our daled amot of concern — i.e., that the only issues we should consider, to the exclusion of all others, were those dealing with Israel and antisemitism. But I’m not prepared to write about that in detail yet. Maybe one day. But not yet.
Similarly, I’ve been thinking about what responsibility my modern Orthodox religious leadership has, if any, to discuss how Jewish values impact the moral, ethical, and political issues with which our country has been contending over the past year. I was particularly struck by this question while listening to a minister of another faith community — Mariann Edgar Budde, the Episcopalian bishop of Washington, D.C. — exemplify such leadership, and like Nathan of old (II Samuel 12:7-12), speak truth to power with courage, compassion, care, and concern. She truly concretized Hillel’s maxim (Pirkei Avot 2:5) of be-makom she’ein anashim, hishtadel le-hiyot ish — which means “in a place where there are no people acting as they should, strive to be a person who does.” But here too I’m not prepared to write about that in detail yet. Maybe one day. But not yet.
I do want to talk about responsibility, however, so let me turn to a specific, discrete topic — the submission to a court of letters by religious leaders on behalf of sexual abuse defendants seeking leniency in sentencing.
Some background: In our criminal law system, the battles in the courtroom are adversarial, between lawyers for the government and those for the defendant. The major players involved — the accused and the victim — speak directly to the court only if called as fact witnesses at trial. Others with relationships to the parties have no interaction with the court.
There is one important exception, though. When a defendant has either pled guilty or been found guilty by a jury, judges look beyond the defendant, victim, lawyers, and the probation department’s pre-sentence report in deciding on the sentence to impose. In this difficult task — one of the most demanding tasks judges face — they consider relevant information submitted by others, including friends and family of the defendant, and more infrequently, the victim. Defendant-related letters raise mitigating factors that support a lenient sentence; victim-related ones detail the serious harm caused that support a severe one.
But in addition to friends and family of the defendant, when a convicted sex offender is an important or wealthy member of the Orthodox community, Orthodox rabbis and other community leaders sometimes submit letters to the court seeking a lenient sentence. (This may be true of other communities as well. My purpose here is to talk about my community; I’ll leave it to others to speak about theirs.)
Indeed, I’ve read many such letters — submitted in a number of cases by congregational rabbis (both modern Orthodox and more right-wing ones), deans of yeshivot, roshei yeshiva, principals of day schools and seminaries, educators, camp rabbis, a head of a major rabbinical organization, and in the case of a felon who was a doctor (now unlicensed), many doctors and nurses — seeking leniency for the offenders. Many letters appeared on the writers’ organizational letterhead, but even when they do not, the writers noted their affiliations, thus highlighting their religious and professional positions in connection with their plea for leniency. (In some instances, some of these leaders also attended sentencing sessions, sitting with the defendant’s family and other supporters.)
These letter writers had not expected their names or affiliations to be seen by anyone other than the judge, since they had been assured that the letters would be sealed. Nonetheless, over the objections of the defendant’s lawyer and as a result of the efforts of Asher Lovy of Za’akah, https://www.facebook.com/asher.lovy an organization “dedicated to advocating for survivors of child sexual abuse in the Orthodox Jewish community,” a federal judge in Maryland held that there is no confidentiality to such letters, names, or affiliations, and unsealed the letters.
It was those letters from Maryland, as well as others, that I read. In addition to lauding the character, and noting the community and institutional actions, of convicted sexual predators, all the letter writers had a number of things in common in seeking leniency: all used their religious and/or professional titles, implying that they were speaking more than as private individuals; none mentioned the sexual nature of the crime or its seriousness; and while many showed great care for the predators and their families, not a single one exhibited even an ounce of compassion for the nameless and ignored victims or their families. If you didn’t know better, you might have thought the court was dealing with a victimless crime like gambling.
Which takes us back to responsibility. To whom did these religious leaders have their primary responsibility — to the criminals, or to their victims, who are often children? I think Rav Hayyim Soloveitchik, although he did not use the word responsibility, gave an answer to a similar question that could be applied to mine. In a famous response to the question of what the function of a rabbi is, Rav Hayyim said, as quoted by his grandson, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, in “Halakhic Man” (p. 91, trans. Lawrence Kaplan): “To redress the grievances of those who are abandoned and alone, . . . and to save the oppressed from the hands of his oppressor.” Very few are more abandoned, alone, and oppressed than victims of sexual predators.
Yet those rabbis and educators who wrote the letters or sat in the courtroom totally ignored the grievances of the victims and the pain of the children who were raped or appeared in the CSAM (child sexual abuse material) that defendants possessed; they were concerned with and supported only the sexual abusers. By not realizing that their major responsibility was to the abused children and not to the adult abusers, no matter how much money the abusers donated to their schools, shuls, or organizations, these rabbis and educators brought shame on our community and disgraced the name of God — a commission of the serious sin of chilul Hashem.
There is more to write about this topic: for example, the need for letter writers to investigate the crime committed before asking for leniency; whether it is possible to write a letter seeking leniency as well as showing an understanding of the serious nature of the crime and expressing true compassion for the victims; the difference between rabbinical letters and those from family and personal friends; how rabbinical support of the oppressors adversely affects the lives of both the specific victims in the case as well as other victims in the community; the (in?)sufficiency of the apologies that some letter writers issued after their letters were made public (I have strong opinions about apologies — see “If You’re Going to Apologize, Apologize!” and “An Attribute of the Strong, a Virtue of the Brave”); and how rabbinic and other national organizations should address this shameful activity by some of their members and leaders. But these questions will have to wait for another day.
I’ll end with the Rav’s elaboration of the quote about rabbinical functions from, as he was wont to say, grandfather. “The actualization of the ideals of justice and righteousness is the pillar of fire which halakhic man follows when he, as a rabbi and teacher in Israel, serves his community . . . . The anguish of the poor, the despair of the helpless and humiliated outweigh many commandments.” I pray that before another rabbi, educator, or serious member of the Orthodox community seeks leniency for a convicted sex felon, they first read the words of Rav Hayyim and the Rav. And then use whatever pastoral or other skills they have to aid and support the victims. Only then, as the Rav writes, can our community’s leaders “fulfill the task of creation imposed on [them]: the perfection of the world under the dominion of Halakha and the renewal of the face of creation.”
Joseph C. Kaplan, a retired lawyer, longtime Teaneck resident, and regular columnist for the Jewish Standard and the New Jersey Jewish News, is the author of “A Passionate Writing Life: From ‘In my Opinion’ to ‘I’ve Been Thinking’” (available at Teaneck’s Judaica House). He and his wife, Sharon, have been blessed with four wonderful daughters and five delicious grandchildren.
https://njjewishnews.timesofisrael.com/non-halakhic-men-and-some-women/
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