The Awareness Center, Inc. (International Jewish Coaltion Against Sexual Assault): Case of Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman

Case of Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman

Past Executive Vice President of Birth Right Israel

Past Senior Rabbi - Temple Emanu-El; Dallas, TX

Past Rabbi - Central Synagogue; New York, NY

Past President - Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR)

Past Vice President - World Union for Progressive Judaism

Past President - Hebrew Union College; Cincinnati, OH

Past Adjunct Professor of Religious Studies - Perkins Theological Seminary, Southern Methodist University (SMU); Dallas, TX

Rabi Sheldon Zimmerman was suspended from the Reform movement's rabbinical organization because of sexually impropriety. Zimmerman was later hired by the Steinhart Foundation to hold the top position of Birthright Israel -- which sends thousands of young Jewish adults on free trips to Israel.

Born in Toronto, Canada, in 1942, Rabbi Zimmerman received his Honors B.A. (1964) and M.A. (1965) in Philosophy from the University of Toronto and pursued post graduate studies in Philosophy and Hebrew studies at New York University. He received his Bachelor of Hebrew Literature (1969), Master of Arts in Hebrew Literature (with honors) (1970) and Doctor of Divinity (honoris causa) (1995) from HUC-JIR.

Sheldon Zimmerman was ordained at the College-Institute's New York School in 1970 and represents the eleventh generation of rabbis in his family. He served as the Senior Rabbi of Temple Emanu-El of Dallas, Texas (1985-1995), and formerly served as Senior Rabbi (1972-85) and as Assistant Rabbi (1970-72) of Central Synagogue in New York City (1972-85).

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Table of Contents

1996

Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman Inaugurated as The 7th President of HUC-JIR (10/31/1996)

2000

Respected Reform leader resigns amid sexual misconduct charges (12/06/2000)

Hebrew Union College president resigns (12/07/2000)

Suspended Rabbi Quits Seminary Presidency (12/07/2000)

Facing sex accusations, Reform rabbi quits (12/08/2000)

HUC Head Resigns; Sexual Misconduct Cited: Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman guilty of `sexual boundary violation' following yearlong probe by Reform movement; campus in shock. (12/08/2000)

Shortage in Clergy Leaves Pulpits Unfilled (02/14/2000)

New cases refocus attention on misconduct in Jewish clergy (12/15/2000)

Joseph and the Question of Sexual Misconduct (12/15/2000)

Jewish groups begin to shine light on rabbinic misconduct (12/15/2000)

2001

Months after HUC resignation, Zimmerman hired by Birthright (04/05/2001)

Birthright Taps Deposed Chief Of Seminary For a Top Post - Tarred in Sex Scandal, Zimmerman Called 'Fantastic Educator' (04/06/2001)

Birthright hires ex-HUC president despite sex scandal (04/13/2001)

Matter of concern (04/13/2001)

The Year In Review For U.S. Jewry, the year included soul-searching, solidarity and scandal. (09/14/2001)

Suspended Rabbi Quits Seminary Presidency (12/07/2001)

2002

Sex abuse by clerics is crisis of many faiths- While sexual misconduct has rocked many religions, leaders of some have acted far more quickly than others (03/25/2002)

Gesher City Board of Advisors (Winter/2002)

2003

Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman Appointed Head of Renaissance and Renewal Pillar of United Jewish Communities (02/18/2003)

2004

Amid abuse reports, Conservatives issue new guidelines on harassment (01/24/2004)

Knoxville Jewish Alliance Washington Conference (03/22/2004)

2005

Why is the Jewish community still promoting Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman (11/05/2005)

2006

Beth Israel installs Cahana Nov. 10 - Friedman concert celebrates event (11/01/2006)

2007

REINING IN ABUSE In jurisdictional jungle, where does the buck stop in misconduct cases? (01/10/2006)

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Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman Inaugurated as The 7th President of HUC-JIR
Hebrew Union College, Jewish Institute of Religion - October 31, 1996
http://www.huc.edu/news/zinaug.html

Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman was inaugurated as the seventh President in the history of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR), the academic and professional leadership center of Reform Judaism, on October 31, 1996 at 2 pm at CincinnatiUs Isaac M. Wise Temple / K.K. BUnai Yeshurun Plum Street Temple. The Inauguration Service, attended by the leadership of the Reform movement from across North America, Israel and abroad, and leaders of academic institutions, seminaries, and national communal organizations, featured the participation of alumni, faculty, and students. Rabbi Zimmerman was inducted into office by Stanley P. Gold, Chairman of HUC-JIRUs Board of Governors. The Inauguration Committee was chaired by Robert M. Blatt, Vice-Chair of HUC-JIRUs Board of Governors and Co-Chair of HUC-JIRUs Cincinnati Board of Overseers.

As President of the College-Institute, Rabbi Zimmerman heads the four-campus, international seminary which educates men and women for service to American and world Jewry as rabbis, cantors, educators, communal service workers and offers graduate and postgraduate degree programs to scholars of all faiths. Rabbi Zimmerman succeeds Dr. Alfred Gottschalk, Chancellor after heading HUC-JIR for twenty-five years.

"We are proud that Rabbi Zimmerman will be leading the College-Institute into the 21st century,S commented Mr. Gold. "His passionate commitment to Judaism and the Jewish people is a source of inspiration.

"I am greatly honored to be called to serve as the President of the College-Institute," stated Rabbi Zimmerman. "So much of the future of the Reform movement and Judaism depends upon the College-Institute's vision and accomplishments, and those whom it motivates and trains to lead our people in partnership with the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and the Central Conference of American Rabbis. We are at a critical juncture in Jewish history and I pray for God's blessing in the tasks ahead."

Profile of Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman

Rabbi Zimmerman was ordained at the College-Institute's New York School in 1970 and represents the eleventh generation of rabbis in his family. He most recently served as the Senior Rabbi of Temple Emanu-El of Dallas, Texas (1985-1995), and formerly served as Senior Rabbi (1972-85) and as Assistant Rabbi (1970-72) of Central Synagogue in New York City (1972-85).

A prominent national leader of the Reform Movement and American Jewry, Rabbi Zimmerman has served as President of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) and as Vice President of the World Union for Progressive Judaism. He was a member of the Executive Committee and Board of Trustees of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC). He has served on HUC-JIR's Board of Governors, as President of HUC-JIR's Rabbinic Alumni Association, as a member of the CCAR's Committee on Responsa, as Co-Chairman of the UAHC's Joint National Commission on Outreach, and as Chairman of the UAHC's Committee on Drug and Alcohol Abuse. His leadership has extended to the National Rabbinic Cabinets of the United Jewish Appeal, the Jewish National Fund, and State of Israel Bonds. He has served on the Boards of The World Center for Jewish Unity and of the Synagogue Council of America.

Rabbi Zimmerman has served as Adjunct Professor at Perkins Theological Seminary, Southern Methodist University (SMU), Dallas, as Adjunct Professor of Religious Studies at SMU (1986-89), as Lecturer in Liturgy and Rabbinics at HUC-JIR's New York School (1980-85), as Lecturer in Theology at Fordham University (1971-74), and as Instructor in Philosophy at Hunter College (1966-69). He has served as Alumnus-in-Residence at HUC-JIR's Los Angeles School (1985) and HUC-JIR's Cincinnati School (1989).

Rabbi Zimmerman's extensive civic involvements in Dallas included his service on the Boards of Children's Medical Foundation, Jewish Federation of Dallas, the Chaplain's Advisory Board of SMU, and the AIDS-ARMS Advisory Council. He has served on the Committee on Institutional Ethics at Baylor University Medical Center and on the Advisory Board of The Women's Center of Dallas. He is past Chairman of the Interfaith Commission of the Jewish Community Relations Council and Greater Dallas Community of Churches.

During his tenure in New York, Rabbi Zimmerman held leadership and advisory positions with UJA-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, the Anti-Defamation League, B'nai B'rith Youth Organization, the American Jewish Committee, ARZA, ORT, American Jewish Congress, American Zionist Federation, the New York Board of Rabbis, Histadruth Ivrith of America, and the American Israel Friendship League. He was Religious News Commentator for WOR Radio and moderator of the Message of Israel radio broadcasts, founded by Rabbi Jonah Wise.

In April 1993, Rabbi Zimmerman was invited by President Clinton to be part of a sixteen-person delegation accompanying Vice President Gore to Warsaw to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In June 1994, he was invited by President Ezer Weizman to participate with leaders of Israeli and world Jewry in a two-day dialogue at the home of Israel's President.

Rabbi Zimmerman is co-editor of The Threat of Mixed Marriage - A Response and has been widely published in the CCAR Journal, Judaism, Keeping Posted, Dialogue, Brotherhood Magazine and Moment Magazine. He has contributed to a number of books, including Alcoholism and the Jewish Community, Twelve Jewish Steps for Recovery, and Healing of Soul, Healing of Body. He is the author of three family prayer books for Sabbath and the festivals. He has been honored by numerous awards for his communal service, and has been a distinguished lecturer and scholar in residence at synagogues and churches throughout the United States and Canada.

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Respected Reform leader resigns amid sexual misconduct charges
By Julie WienerJTA - December 6, 2000

NEW YORK, Dec. 6 (JTA) — Reform rabbis across the country are reeling from the news that one of Reform Judaism's highest-ranking professionals has resigned amid charges of sexual misconduct.

Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman, 58, quit his post as president of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion on Monday, shortly after being suspended from the Reform movement's rabbinic association.

Zimmerman is the highest-ranking rabbi ever to be suspended from the Central Conference of American Rabbis.

The suspension, resulting from an inquiry by a seven-member CCAR ethics committee, prohibits Zimmerman from serving as a rabbi in any Reform temple or institution for at least two years.

According to an HUC statement, the suspension results from Zimmerman's "personal relationships" before he became president in 1996.

Zimmerman did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Reform officials said Zimmerman violated guidelines concerning "sexual ethics and sexual boundaries," but the ethics committee — citing a policy of not commenting on individual cases — will not disclose the precise nature of his misconduct.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Reform movement's Union of American Hebrew Congregations, said the committee's inquiry came in response to a complaint filed earlier this year. Zimmerman could have contested the decision, but chose not to, said Yoffie.

"He recognized that he made a mistake and accepted responsibility for that," said Yoffie, who does not sit on the committee and said he does not know the details of Zimmerman's misconduct.

"Obviously, a suspension of two years indicates this is a serious matter," said Yoffie.

Zimmerman, who is known by his colleagues as "Shelly," was the past president of the CCAR, the body from which he has been suspended. He was widely admired not only for his administrative work in the college, but for being a spokesman for the Reform movement.

Zimmerman is widely known by "the force of his personality and his ability to present the principles and commitments of Reform Judaism in a popular and compelling way," Yoffie said.

The news hit students and colleagues in the Reform movement hard.

"Shelly is one of the great American rabbis," said Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin, of the Community Synagogue of Port Washington in Long Island, N.Y.

"He has been a leader in this movement for three decades," said Salkin. "His teaching and creativity has touched numerous lives. I profoundly respect him and call him a friend. My heart aches for him and for his family and for our movement."

One former student who considered Zimmerman her mentor, said, "It feels like a death.

"He was a brilliant teacher, and was the single most helpful person in teaching us to find meaning in a text and to communicate it to people," said this rabbi, who asked not to be identified.

In the past five years, the CCAR's ethics committee and guidelines on sexual misconduct have been strengthened and enforcement more aggressive, say people familiar with the process.

Rabbi Paul Menitoff, the executive vice president of the CCAR, said there have been about 35 cases — not all concerning sexual misconduct — brought before the ethics committee in the past five years. Inquiries in these cases involve interviews with both the accuser, accused and other sources when relevant.

After evaluating each case, the committee votes either to dismiss the charge or take one of the following disciplinary actions: reprimand, censure, censure with publication in the CCAR newsletter, suspension or expulsion, said Menitoff, who is a nonvoting member of the committee.

Three rabbis have been suspended in the past five years, Menitoff said.

Zimmerman has been credited with rebuilding HUC's faculty, and under his tenure the college began ordaining rabbis on the West Coast, as well as in New York and Cincinnati.

Recently, Zimmerman had been vocal about the need to address the national shortage of rabbis and other Jewish professionals.

Before assuming the HUC presidency, Zimmerman served as senior rabbi of Temple Emanu-El in Dallas and assistant rabbi of Central Synagogue in New York. Ordained in 1970, he was president of the CCAR from 1993 to 1995.

HUC appointed its provost, Norman Cohen, to serve as acting president. The college is in the process of forming a search committee for a new president.

HUC, which has campuses in Cincinnati, New York, Los Angeles and Jerusalem, has 1,400 students in its rabbinical, cantorial and other graduate programs.

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Hebrew Union College president resigns

The Associated Press - December 7, 2000

CINCINNATI -- An 11th-generation rabbi has resigned as president of Reform Judaism's leading seminary over accusations that he had inappropriate relationships with women before taking office four years ago.

The Hebrew Union College board accepted Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman's resignation on Monday and appointed Provost Norman J. Cohen as acting president.

"We are profoundly saddened by this development and sorry for all the individuals involved," said Burton Lehman, chairman of the college's board of governors. "Rabbi Zimmerman has been a dedicated and able leader."

Zimmerman, 58, and his wife, said they were "devastated" by the allegations, WCPO-TV reported Wednesday. Zimmerman said the claims were old and he wasn't sure why they surfaced now.

The college, which has campuses in Cincinnati, New York, Los Angeles and Jerusalem, trains rabbis, cantors, religious school educators, Jewish communal workers and graduate and postgraduate scholars. It is the seminary for nearly all Reform rabbis, and it ordained the country's first female rabbi in 1972. Zimmerman's son, Rabbi (NAME REMOVED), was ordained in 1993 at the New York campus.

At least one complaint involving Sheldon Zimmerman was made about two weeks ago to the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the New York-based professional organization for Reform rabbis ordained by Hebrew Union presidents.

The alleged relationships, which would violate the conference's ethics rules, preceded Zimmerman's arrival at Hebrew Union, college spokeswoman Jean Bloch Rosensaft said.

Zimmerman also was suspended from the rabbinate for two years by the central conference, which represents the 1,800 Reform rabbis in the United States. He was the group's president from 1993 to 1995.

The suspension was ordered by the 25-member CCAR board of trustees during a Dec. 4 meeting in New York.

Rabbi Paul Menitoff, CCAR executive vice president, refused to discuss the investigation. Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the United American Hebrew Congregations, told The Dallas Morning News that Zimmerman did not contest the charges.

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Suspended Rabbi Quits Seminary Presidency

By Gustav Niebuhr.

New York Times - December 7, 2000. pg. A.22

Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman, a leading figure in Judaism's Reform movement as president of its seminary, has resigned from his job after being suspended by the movement's rabbinic organization for having entered into ''personal relationships'' in the past that the organization said violated its ethical code.

Rabbi Zimmerman, president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Learning, where he had been considered a charismatic and innovative leader, quit that post on Monday, after the Central Conference of American Rabbis suspended his rabbinical functions for at least two years, college and conference officials said.

In a statement, the college said the suspension followed an investigation by the conference into ''personal relationships'' of Rabbi Zimmerman, which it did not specify other than to say that they predated his appointment as president in January 1996. Rabbi Zimmerman was the seventh president of the college, which was founded in 1875.

Rabbi Paul J. Menitoff, the conference's executive vice president, said its board approved the penalty on Monday, based on a recommendation by its ethics committee, which looks into complaints about the conference's 1,700 members.

Rabbi Menitoff said that conference rules prevented him from discussing the case but that the board decided Rabbi Zimmerman had violated a part of the ethics code, paragraph 2A, which deals with sexual conduct.

It is included in the section of the code on ''personal responsibility,'' which covers such matters as family life, personal honesty and finances. It calls on rabbis ''to be scrupulous in avoiding even the appearance of sexual misconduct, whether by taking advantage of our position with those weaker than ourselves or dependent on us or succumbing to the temptations of willing adults.''

Hebrew Union, which trains men and women as rabbis and cantors and in other graduate and professional fields, has 1,500 students on campuses in Cincinnati, Los Angeles, New York and Jerusalem. Before becoming president, Rabbi Zimmerman, 58, was senior rabbi of Temple Emanu-El in Dallas from 1985 to 1995, and senior rabbi at Central Synagogue in New York, from 1972 to 1985. He is married and has four children. From 1993 to 1995, he was also the conference's president.

Rabbi Zimmerman's resignation was first reported yesterday in The Cincinnati Enquirer and The Dallas Morning News.

Efforts to reach him through the college and its officials were unsuccessful. The college said it appointed its provost, Norman Cohen, as acting president and would search for a permanent replacement.

Rabbi Menitoff said the conference followed ''the same process that we'd follow with any rabbi in the conference in similar circumstances.'' He said complaints against a rabbi are referred to and investigated by the ethics committee. Depending on that committee's findings, the conference may dismiss the complaint, privately reprimand or publicly censure a rabbi or suspendn or expel a rabbi.

Rabbi Menitoff said the decision to suspend Rabbi Zimmerman was ''very difficult and painful for everyone involved.''

Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the Reform movement's synagogue organization, said Rabbi Zimmerman did not contest the findings or the judgment against him but responded to the decision ''with great dignity.''

Rabbi Yoffie said that during his tenure as president, Rabbi Zimmerman added younger scholars to the faculty and expanded the college's Los Angeles branch so much that it will begin ordaining rabbis in 2002.

Another member of the conference, Rabbi A. James Rudin, emeritus director of interreligious affairs at the American Jewish Committee, said Rabbi Zimmerman's resignation was ''a real loss'' and ''a shock to the movement.''

Hebrew Union's chairman, Burton Lehman, praised Rabbi Zimmerman as ''a great, great leader.'' Mr. Lehman said that Rabbi Zimmerman's resignation would ''have an impact'' but that the college was strong.

''Transitionally, we'll be fine,'' Mr. Lehman said. ''We have a strong faculty that will carry this institution through this tribulation.''

CORRECTION: New York Times - December 20, 2000

An article on Dec 7, 2000 about the resignation of Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman as president of the seminary for the Reform Jewish movement in the US misstated its name. It is Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

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Facing sex accusations, Reform rabbi quits
By Julie Wiener
Jewish Telegraphic Agency - December 8, 2000

NEW YORK -- Reform rabbis across the country are reeling from the news that one of Reform Judaism's most respected professionals has resigned amid accusations of sexual misconduct.

Zimmerman is the highest-ranking rabbi ever to be suspended from the Central Conference of American Rabbis.

The suspension, resulting from an inquiry by a seven-member CCAR ethics committee, prohibits Zimmerman from serving as a rabbi in any Reform temple or institution for at least two years.

According to an HUC statement, the suspension results from Zimmerman's "personal relationships" before he became president in 1996.

Zimmerman did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Reform officials said Zimmerman violated guidelines concerning "sexual ethics and sexual boundaries," but the ethics committee -- citing a policy of not commenting on individual cases -- will not disclose the precise nature of his misconduct.

"He recognized that he made a mistake and accepted responsibility for that," said Yoffie, who does not sit on the committee and said he does not know the details of Zimmerman's misconduct.

"Obviously, a suspension of two years indicates this is a serious matter," said Yoffie.

Zimmerman is widely known by "the force of his personality and his ability to present the principles and commitments of Reform Judaism in a popular and compelling way," Yoffie said.

The news hit students and colleagues in the Reform movement hard.

"Shelly is one of the great American rabbis," said Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin, of the Community Synagogue of Port Washington in Long Island, N.Y.

"He has been a leader in this movement for three decades," he added.

One former student who considered Zimmerman her mentor, said, that this move "feels like a death."

"He was a brilliant teacher, and was the single most helpful person in teaching us to find meaning in a text and to communicate it to people," said this rabbi, who asked not to be identified.

In the past five years, the CCAR's ethics committee and guidelines on sexual misconduct have been strengthened and enforcement more aggressive, say people familiar with the process.

Rabbi Paul Menitoff, the executive vice president of the CCAR, said there have been about 35 cases -- not all concerning sexual misconduct -- brought before the ethics committee in the past five years. Inquiries in these cases involve interviews with both the accuser, accused and other sources when relevant.

Three rabbis have been suspended in the past five years, Menitoff said.

Zimmerman has been credited with rebuilding HUC's faculty, and under his tenure the college began ordaining rabbis on the West Coast, as well as in New York and Cincinnati.

HUC appointed its provost, Norman Cohen, to serve as acting president.

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NATIONAL DESK

Shortage in Clergy Leaves Pulpits Unfilled

By NADINE BROZAN

New York Times - February 14, 2000

Congregation B'nai Israel in Hattiesburg, Miss., has been without a rabbi for more than three years. Every other week, a student rabbi flies in from Cincinnati. At other times, congregants lead Sabbath services, run the Sunday school and even conduct funerals.

It is not for lack of effort that the 110-year-old synagogue has failed to attract a rabbi. It has listed its opening with the placement office of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the Reform movement seminary, since its last rabbi left, and it usually sends a representative to Cincinnati in the spring to recruit at the college.

''We go to interview even when no one signs up,'' said Steve Doblin, president of B'nai Israel and a dean at the University of Southern Mississippi.

The temple's plight is not unusual. Not only are synagogues finding it increasingly difficult to hire clergy members, so too are Roman Catholic and Protestant churches.

In the Roman Catholic Church, according to the National Pastoral Life Center, an independent organization in New York that helps local parishes, the number of parish priests declined by 12 percent from 1992 to 1997, and churches are increasingly relying on lay people.

In the Episcopal Church, ''the situation is grave,'' said the Rev. Hugh Magers, a member of the congregational ministries cluster at the denomination's national headquarters in Manhattan. ''As best as I can tell, we have under 300 members of the clergy out of 15,000 who were born after 1964.''

In Reform Judaism, about 200 out 895 congregations are without a full-time rabbi. The modern Orthodox wing of Judaism has the same problem.

''There are more jobs open now, due to the growth, thank God, of the Orthodox community, and filling positions in smaller communities can be extremely difficult,'' said Rabbi Steven Dworken, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Council of America.

The shortage in the ranks of the Jewish clergy began about five years ago. Before then, there were more rabbis than synagogues. ''The issue of the glut was raised with the college in 1993,'' said Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman, president of Hebrew Union College. ''As a result, recruitment was not emphasized and was not considered an imperative.''

Though enrollment at the college has remained stable, the number of congregations has grown. Fifteen years ago 764 synagogues belonged to the Union of American Hebrew Congregations; today 895 do. So not only are there new pulpits to fill, but, Rabbi Zimmerman said, ''large congregations need more rabbis.''

Rural areas have always had difficulty attracting clergy, no matter the denomination. Now, urban congregations are feeling the pinch.

''What used to be a problem for Wyoming and Montana is now a problem for everybody,'' said the Rev. James G. Wilson, executive director of the church deployment office at the Episcopal Church Center.

In part, the robust economy is being blamed, with many people who might have entered the ministry attracted to more lucrative fields.

''We have done too good a job educating our children and giving them banking, legal, business and medical opportunities. Years ago, many fellows became rabbis because they had no other choices,'' Rabbi Dworken said.

As a professor of religion at Columbia University for 21 years, Peter Awn said he had seen only four students majoring in religion at Columbia pursue careers in the clergy. In his view, the declining appeal of a life in ministry is more a result of the rejection of authority than of the lure of more lucrative jobs.

''People who might once have gone into the clergy as an avenue toward social change now see it as confining rather than liberating,'' Professor Awn said.

Among those who do seek jobs in the clergy, quality of life plays an increasingly decisive role as they question the long hours and unrelenting demands.

Though some experts think the decline in the clergy is cyclical, others think that failure to stem the tide would have serious implications.

''Unless we somehow increase the number of those choosing religious professional life, ultimately this will be a disaster for organized religious life,'' Rabbi Zimmerman said.

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New cases refocus attention on misconduct in Jewish clergy

By Julie Wiener

Jewish Telegraphic Agency - December 15, 2000

NEW YORK -- For those who look up to the American Jewish clergy, it has not been a good year.

Last week, one of the Reform movement's most prominent rabbis was suspended from the movement's rabbinical association for past sexual misconduct.

Shortly after his suspension from the Central Conference of American Rabbis, Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman, widely respected as a Jewish thinker and teacher, resigned as president of the movement's Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

The news about Zimmerman came on the heels of several other widely publicized incidents involving Jewish clergy:

A Reform rabbi in Cherry Hill, N.J., faces a possible death sentence for allegedly hiring people to murder his wife in 1994.

A Conservative cantor in the Chicago area was arrested over Thanksgiving weekend for alleged involvement in a prostitution ring.

The Orthodox Union has just received a report investigating its handling of allegations that a New Jersey rabbi working for the movement's national youth group sexually harassed and molested teens. The report's findings and recommendations will not be made public until late this month.

The wave of incidents is refocusing attention on an issue that has come into public view only in recent years.

In the past, rabbinic misconduct -- particularly sexual misconduct -- was rarely discussed publicly. Many advocates for victims complained that rabbinical associations were more interested in protecting their members than the people they hurt.

Today there are stirrings of change. Leaders of the rabbinic organizations say misconduct remains rare, but in the past five years, three of the four major denominations have developed new guidelines -- or modified old ones -- for addressing misconduct.

In addition, some rabbinic seminaries are raising the issues for rabbis-in-training, both before and after ordination.

It is unclear what overall impact such changes are having, since no one appears to be tracking the issue or monitoring how the new guidelines are affecting the number of complaints or the actions taken against rabbis.

While some believe that recent high-profile cases may encourage victims to come forward, others worry that the pendulum may swing too far.

They worry that fear of false accusations or misunderstandings are leading rabbis to become nervous about even innocently hugging congregants in need of comfort or counseling people behind closed doors.

One result from all the publicity is a growing awareness of the issue, which many expect will lead to less tolerance for misconduct.

"The wall of silence around clergy misconduct is being taken down," said Susan Weidman Schneider, editor of Lilith, a feminist Jewish magazine.

In 1998, the magazine published an article about women who said they were sexually harassed by the late charismatic Orthodox leader Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach.

Rabbi Debra Orenstein, a fellow at the Wilstein Institute in Encino, who has been an advocate on this issue in the past, said, "People are less skittish and afraid of saying this happens with rabbis and are therefore more willing to deal with it."

Rabbinic sexual misconduct is an extraordinarily complex issue.

It ranges from more obvious transgressions, such as sexual harassment and inappropriate touching, to more ambiguous cases in which a rabbi has a seemingly consensual relationship with a congregant or staff person, but which is questionable because of the power dynamics involved.

It is difficult to know how prevalent misconduct cases are or what percentage is reported.

As Rabbi Joel Meyers, executive vice president of the Conservative movement's Rabbinical Assembly, put it, "I can never guarantee there are not things that happen that don't get taken care of.

"Obviously someone has to lodge a complaint. My office is not a police force and we're not on witch hunts."

It is also difficult to assess how fairly cases are handled, since rabbinic ethics committees -- in order to protect both the accuser and the accused -- operate in secrecy.

That secrecy "by its very nature makes it difficult to evaluate the process at all," said Rabbi Shira Stern, chairwoman of the Reform movement's Women's Rabbinic Network.

The Conservative, Reconstructionist and Reform rabbinical associations have created or modified policies concerning sexual misconduct within the past five years.

The Conservative movement's guidelines -- in the works for several years -- have not yet been printed and distributed to rabbis, but they are expected to be completed in June 2001.

The Orthodox rabbinical association has not modified its procedures in more than 50 years, according to Rabbi Steven Dworken, the group's executive vice president.

But the group's president, Rabbi Kenneth Hain, said the process may be re-examined if that is recommended in the Orthodox Union's new report on the handling of the youth abuse case.

The movements vary in how explicit their guidelines are about procedures for inquiry and punitive measures. The Rabbinical Council of America, which is Orthodox, and the Reform movement's CCAR made their guidelines available to JTA, while the Conservative and Reconstructionist associations gave overviews but would not distribute actual policies.

All the ethics committees request complaints in writing and give an opportunity for the accused rabbi to respond in writing. They then interview both parties and other sources, where appropriate, in order to ascertain what happened and how to respond.

When rabbis are found guilty, the responses range from a reprimand to suspension to expulsion from the association, depending on the misconduct and the assessment of the ethics committee.

Some of the movements require therapy and a process of tshuvah, or repentance, in order for the charged to pursue their rabbinic careers.

In addition, the Reform movement informs any future employers of that rabbi about that rabbi's past transgressions and rehabilitation process.

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Joseph and Questions of Sexual Misconduct

By Rabbi Melanie Aron

Shirhadash - December 15, 2000

If you read your Notes, then you are expecting me to talk about "Reflections on the Zohar". Actually Jewish Mysticism has never been my area of greatest knowledge or enthusiasm but I know it is of interest to many of our members and so this fall I took a distance learning class on the Zohar through the Jewish Theological Seminary's continuing education for rabbi's program. I can't say that I've become an expert, but at least I have opened my mind to further exploration, and I hope to speak at some later date about that study.

Tonight, though I would like to speak about something that has weighed heavily on my mind for the past ten days. It is a subject I approach with some trepidation, as it is neither pleasant nor tasteful. In addition it is a topic that many people feel should not be discussed in public, and one that our movement has suggested that rabbis not address, lest we fall into speaking richilut and lashon hara, gossip and slander. However, in that articles on this subject have appeared in the Cincinnati Inquirer and then subsequently in the New York Times and in papers around the country including our own Northern California Jewish Bulletin, it feels to me like the "elephant in the living room".

For those who have not heard, on Thursday December 7th Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman resigned as president of the Hebrew Union College after being suspended by the Central Conference of American Rabbis for two years for having entered into personal relationships in the past that the organization said violated its ethical code.

This is very painful for our movement and for me personally.

Several years ago a member of the congregation came to talk with me about some feelings she was having subsequent to the sudden resignation of Rabbi Robert Kirschner who had been accused of sexual harassment. Rabbi Kirshner was a dynamic and intelligent rabbi, who had been appointed at a young age as the senior rabbi of Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco. He had published an outstanding book on Responsa of the Holocaust period and was well regarded. This member of our congregation had felt very positively about her interactions with Rabbi Kirshner who had been her mentor through the conversion process and was now quite upset to find that her teacher was not in fact, what he had seemed to be.

I guess my feelings about Rabbi Zimmerman are similar. He was my teacher at the Hebrew Union College in New York, where as a pulpit rabbi he came and worked with us on our senior sermons. He was a gifted midrashist, a rabbi's rabbi. At a time when congregations were hesitant about hiring women, he had hired one of my friends, three years ahead of me, as an assistant rabbi at Central Synagogue in New York, and she has benefited throughout her career from his mentoring. At various conferences, I had been impressed when he got up to speak and I had heard, on the whole, good things about what he had done as President of the College. Shelly Zimmerman and his wife, a licensed family therapist, were among the first to urge the Jewish community to face the issues of alcoholism and substance abuse in our midst. Perhaps because Rabbi Zimmerman seemed like such a mensch, his fall from grace has been more difficult for me than that of other rabbis who have been similarly censured.

As in the case of President Clinton, there are those who have questioned how these allegations against the president of the Hebrew Union College came forward, and wondered if they reflect opposition to Rabbi Zimmerman's leadership in other areas.

In addition with President Clinton, there are those who have argued that the issue here is not so much the failing of the leader, but the change in community standards. Past Presidents of the United States have had affairs that were not reported to the press, and for which they suffered no consequences. In the not so distant past, people accepted it when a previous President of the Hebrew Union College married a woman with whom he had a relationship while she was married to another man. Ironically Rabbi Zimmerman was in the leadership of the Central Conference of American Rabbis at the time when new and more severe standards of sexual misconduct were drawn up and enforcement made much more aggressive.

On the whole we do not talk about incidents such as these because of our discomfort and because we don't see a value in discussion. This is the way of the world, someone said to me. This is the result of American Puritanism, said another, though in this case we are dealing with traditional Jewish not Protestant values. Someone else commented on the announcement of two speakers on sexuality on the front page of the most recent Jewish Community News: Rabbi Boteach who will be speaking at the South Bay Institute in January, and Dr. Ruth, who will be speaking at the Federation's annual dinner. "They'll think Jews are obsessed with sex," a member of the congregation commented to me.

Perhaps a little more talk about sexuality and sexual temptations wouldn't hurt. In next week's Torah portion we will be reading about the incident between Joseph and Potiphar's wife. The tradition asked, what caused Joseph to resist Potisphar's wife's advances. After all he was a young man and she was a beautiful woman. One explanation was that Joseph was afraid of the consequences, of being punished: another, that he did not want to betray the trust that Potiphar had in him and repay him in this way for all his kindnesses. A more involved midrash has the face of Joseph's father Jacob appear before him at the moment that Potiphar's wife disrobes, acting as a physical superego.

In this connection the rabbis tell another story, which we actually studied last night in our Bar and Bat Mitzvah family group. Why do we wear a fringed garment? the rabbis ask. They answer with a Biblical text from the book of Numbers: "So that we might look at them, and remember God's commandments, and not turn aside after the desires of our hearts, or let our eyes lead us into lust." Does it really work? the rabbis ask. Yes, says one rabbi, who tells the story of going into the home of a beautiful courtesan, who lies on seven silk couches covered with silver and gold. But as he climbed up the ladder to approach her, the fringes of his tzizit flew up into his eyes and he was not able to continue. The woman, we are told by the Talmud, was so impressed by his piety that she left her life as a courtesan, and after giving a third of her money to charity, converted to Judaism and became his legal wife.

This story from the Talmud holds out the hope that there might be something that does stop us when we are about to violate our own morals. It reminds us that it is the context of sex and not sexuality itself, which has moral value. Fear of consequences, the desire not to hurt those who have put their trust in us, and an internalized set of moral values: these are the mechanisms we depend on today, as in Joseph's time to prevent the kind of sexual acting out, which has been the Achilles heel of so many of our religious and political leaders.

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Jewish Groups begin to shine light on rabbinic misconduct

By JULIE WIENER

Jewish Telegraphic Agency - December 15, 2000/Kislev 18, 5761, Vol. 53, No.12

NEW YORK - For those who look up to the American Jewish clergy, it has not been a good year.

Last week, one of the Reform movement's most prominent rabbis was suspended from the movement's rabbinical association for past sexual misconduct.

The news about Zimmerman came on the heels of several other widely publicized incidents involving Jewish clergy:

A Reform rabbi in Cherry Hill, N.J. (Rabbi Fred Neulander), faces a possible death sentence for allegedly hiring people to murder his wife in 1994.
A Conservative cantor in the Chicago (Cantor Joel Gordon) area was arrested over Thanksgiving weekend for alleged involvement in a prostitution ring.
The Orthodox Union has just received a report investigating its handling of allegations that a New Jersey rabbi (Baruch Lanner) working for the movement's national youth group sexually harassed and molested teens. The report's findings and recommendations will not be made public until late this month.

The wave of incidents is refocusing attention on an issue that has come into public view only in recent years.

In the past, rabbinic misconduct - particularly sexual misconduct - was rarely discussed publicly. Many advocates for victims complained that rabbinical associations were more interested in protecting their members than the people they hurt.

Today there are stirrings of change. Leaders of the rabbinic organizations say misconduct remains rare, but in the past five years, three of the four denominations have developed new guidelines - or modified old ones - for addressing misconduct.

In addition, some rabbinic seminaries are raising the issues for rabbis-in-training, both before and after ordination.

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Months after HUC resignation, Zimmerman hired by Birthright

By Julie Wiener

JTA - April 5, 2001

NEW YORK, April 5 (JTA) — A rabbi recently suspended from the Reform movement's rabbinic organization because of sexual impropriety has been hired to a top position by a program that sends thousands of young Jews on free trips to Israel.

Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman, who resigned as president of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in December, will become executive vice president of Birthright Israel USA, Inc., based in New York.

He was recruited for the position by Michael Steinhardt, the hedge fund manager-turned-philanthropist who co-founded the Birthright program.

Zimmerman's hire is raising some eyebrows in the Jewish community, though many leading figures praised the appointment.

Steinhardt, for example, said he is "extraordinarily thrilled" to have Zimmerman on staff.

Charles Bronfman, another major philanthropist and Birthright co-founder, called Zimmerman a "terrific, terrific catch for Birthright.

"He is a dynamic educator and leader whose talents will be a great blessing for Birthright Israel," Bronfman said.

Others in the Jewish community feel less blessed.

Susan Weidman Schneider, editor of the feminist Jewish magazine Lilith, said, "Although the specific nature of Zimmerman's actions have not been made public," his hire "seems to repeat a pattern in Jewish life where male rabbis known to have transgressive behaviors in their past have not often suffered professionally for it."

It also comes at a time when rabbis and Jewish professionals are in sharp demand.

Zimmerman led the HUC from 1996 until last December, when he resigned after being suspended for a minimum of two years from the Reform movement's Central Conference of American Rabbis on the recommendation of its ethics committee.

The CCAR never disclosed full details of the case leading to Zimmerman's suspension, under which he is not permitted to serve as a congregational rabbi.

However, officials said it had to do with "personal relationships" before Zimmerman became president of the HUC that violated guidelines concerning "sexual ethics and sexual boundaries."

His resignation shocked many in the Reform world, where Zimmerman was a popular and respected leader known for his abilities as a spokesman, educator and administrator.

According to several sources — including Birthright Israel officials — it is believed that Zimmerman had an extramarital affair with a congregant more than 15 years ago, while he was rabbi of Central Synagogue in New York.

However, CCAR officials who reviewed the case, which was spurred by a complaint from an individual, have refused to confirm or deny the reports.

Zimmerman refused to be interviewed for this story. He issued a statement Thursday thanking Bronfman and Birthright for their support.

Rabbi Paul Menitoff, the CCAR's executive vice president and a member of the ethics committee that recommended Zimmerman's suspension, declined to discuss the case, saying only that Zimmerman is "very talented, and he'll contribute significantly to the development" of Birthright.

Despite Zimmerman's high profile and the notoriety of his suspension — it made The New York Times and several other major dailies — Birthright actively recruited him for the job.

Steinhardt, who first approached Zimmerman, said he knows Zimmerman from his days at Central Synagogue, where Steinhardt was a member.

Steinhardt said he is "not in the slightest" concerned about the fact that the CCAR suspended Zimmerman for sexual misconduct.

"From all that I knew, it seemed like a remarkably harsh response to an event that occurred more than 15 years ago," Steinhardt said.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Reform movement's Union of American Hebrew Congregations and an executive committee member of the CCAR, said Zimmerman "is a good choice for Birthright, and I think he'll do an excellent job."

"On the one hand, I'm supportive of the CCAR and their process and have every reason to believe they've handled it appropriately, but I'm not prepared to jump from that to assume that therefore Rabbi Zimmerman, who's an enormously talented individual, should not be able to contribute elsewhere in the Jewish world," Yoffie said.

Yoffie recently criticized Birthright for accepting money from Rich. The UAHC is one of many organizations that send young people to Israel under Birthright's auspices.

Richard Joel, president of Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, which is Birthright's largest trip provider, said he supports the appointment as long as Zimmerman doesn't present himself as a rabbinic role model.

"I don't think his appointment to this position is making any kind of statement mitigating any kind of improper acts," Joel said. "He has an option to say, because of the adverse publicity, `I'm going to disappear from the public scene and find work that will keep me as a private citizen.' Is that the only course open to someone like Shelly Zimmerman, who's young and talented? Or are there appropriate positions where he can really add value to the Jewish public sphere without necessarily proferring himself as a role model of everything?"

Joel headed an independent commission last year investigating the Orthodox Union's handling of allegations that a high-ranking rabbi employed with its youth group had sexually harassed and molested scores of teenagers. No one considers Zimmerman's alleged misconduct to be of the same gravity, Joel said.

"He's not ministering to a congregation and not speaking on behalf of any particular movement, dogma or sense of principles," Joel said. "He's dealing with one of the most basic of issues — using Israel as a trigger for promoting Jewish identity."

Marlene Post, Birthright's North American chair, said Zimmerman was selected for his academic, administrative and leadership credentials, and will not be in direct contact with Birthright participants.

"The other issues — whatever they are — were things that we felt would not directly affect Birthright," Post said.

Rabbi Shira Stern, a former co-coordinator of the CCAR's Women's Rabbinic Network, said she does not have a problem with Zimmerman's new role.

"He needs to do his own teshuvah," she said, using the Hebrew term for repentance. "But preventing him from working is not a solution. I fully believe that people need to make restitution to those they've harmed, but I don't believe in any respect that his appointment to Birthright would be inappropriate."

Weidman Schneider of Lilith rejected the notion that a professional at Birthright Israel should be held to a laxer moral standard than the president of HUC or a congregational rabbi.

"Since the goal of Birthright is to introduce young people to the highest and most complete participation in Jewish life, it's obvious that the same high moral standards should apply for those leaders as well," she said.

Rabbi Arthur Gross Schaefer, a law professor and spiritual leader of two synagogues in Santa Barbara, Calif., has written extensively on rabbinic misconduct. He declined to comment on Zimmerman's specific case, but said the demands of a new high-profile job can prevent a rabbi guilty of misconduct from doing the soul-searching necessary for repentance.

"As Rambam put it, sometimes you have to earn a new name," Gross Schafer said. "And you don't earn a new name overnight."

Marcia Cohn Spiegel, who also has written on rabbinic sexual misconduct, said she is friends with Zimmerman and is uncertain about his alleged misconduct.

However, she said, it "would have been more appropriate for him to back off for a while. To put him in this position so quickly is indiscreet."

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Birthright Taps Deposed Chief of Seminary for a Top Post –– Tarred in Sex Scandal, Zimmerman Called 'Fantastic Educator'

By Julia Goldman

Forward - April 6, 2001

A Reform rabbi who resigned the movement's top seminary post in a sex scandal this past December has been named to head North American operations for one of the Jewish community's most discussed new programs — Birthright Israel.

Representatives of Birthright Israel announced this week that Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman — the highest-ranking rabbi ever to be suspended by the Reform movement — will become executive vice president of the Israel-based organization's New York office on June 1.

"I consider myself blessed" by the Birthright appointment, Rabbi Zimmerman said in a statement.

Rabbi Zimmerman abruptly stepped down from the presidency of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the Reform rabbinical seminary, after being suspended from the rabbinate for at least two years by the movement's Central Conference of American Rabbis. A seven-member ethics committee found that he had engaged in inappropriate but unspecified "personal relationships" at some point before taking his post at HUC in 1996. Rabbi Zimmerman, a former president of the CCAR, did not contest the findings.

Reform officials have declined to disclose any details surrounding Rabbi Zimmerman's suspension, which followed a yearlong inquiry.

Birthright officials so far have declined to say what, if anything, they were able to learn about the circumstances that precipitated the CCAR's disciplinary action against Rabbi Zimmerman.

Individuals close to Birthright Israel's search process said they were confident with the choice.

"We live in a world where people like to find things to shoot at, and I have no doubt that there are those who can and will be critical of this," said a source privy to the discussions. The talks involved "difficult but direct conversations" with Rabbi Zimmerman, the source said.

"I'll say without exception that among those who are far closer to the movements, there was universal acclaim at the genius of putting [Rabbi Zimmerman] and Birthright together," said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Still, the lack of information about Rabbi Zimmerman's alleged misconduct is a source of concern for some observers. Another communal leader close to the process, who asked not to be identified, said that without more information, it is difficult to assess the appointment. "I don't know what the problem was" at the CCAR, the leader said. "If I had proof, I could say, 'I'm concerned by it' or 'I'm not concerned by it.'"

Rabbi Zimmerman's appointment comes on the heels of another controversy for Birthright Israel, which offers free and subsidized trips to Israel for college youth. Birthright's co-founder Michael Steinhardt — who is also vice chairman of this newspaper — and international chairwoman Marlene Post were among Jewish leaders who wrote letters in behalf of billionaire Marc Rich in his successful bid for a presidential pardon. The Birthright leaders managed to stay out of the media spotlight.

Rabbi Zimmerman's many supporters praise him as a charismatic teacher and able administrator. "The overriding consideration for Shelly Zimmerman is that he's a fantastic educator with incredible experience," said Gideon Mark, the marketing director of Birthright Israel.

"I think those on the search committee were sure he would bring together all the talents needed" to lead Birthright's North American programs, Mr. Mark said.

Former colleagues credited Rabbi Zimmerman with leading an entirely new administrative team at HUC and with developing greater academic and programmatic uniformity across the seminary's campuses in three U.S. cities and Jerusalem.

Mr. Steinhardt, Mr. Bronfman, Ms. Post and Birthright Israel's international director Shimshon Shoshani interviewed between five and 10 candidates for the executive position over the past three months.

Several interviewees reportedly passed on the job, which requires balancing the priorities of the program's primary backers: a coalition of wealthy donors, Israeli government officials and Jewish federations. Michael Papo, the group's second executive vice president, left the New York post on December 31 on what he said were good terms.

Rabbi Zimmerman's first major challenge is likely to be getting the financial and organizational support of some 189 community federations.

Rabbi Zimmerman's suspension bars him from serving as a rabbi in any Reform temple or institution for a minimum of two years. Before his appointment at HUC, Rabbi Zimmerman spent 10 years as the rabbi of Temple Emanu-El in Dallas and 15 years at the Central Synagogue in New York City. He could not be reached for comment.

One of his former students at HUC called him an "exemplary teacher" and a "visionary."

"I don't consider the man to be a predator," said Rabbi Shira Stern, the immediate past-president of the Women's Rabbinic Network who now directs the Joint Chaplaincy Program at the Jewish Federation of Middlesex County, N.J. "And I don't believe that there are implications with regard to Birthright in connection to incidents for which he was accused in December."

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Birthright hires ex-HUC president despite sex scandal

By Julie Wiener

Jewish Telegraphic Agency - April 13, 2001

NEW YORK -- A rabbi recently suspended from the Reform movement's rabbinic organization because of sexual impropriety has been hired to a top position by a program that sends thousands of young Jews on free trips to Israel.

He was recruited for the position by Michael Steinhardt, the hedge fund manager-turned-philanthropist who co-founded the Birthright program.

Zimmerman's hire is raising some eyebrows in the Jewish community, though many leading figures praised the appointment.

Steinhardt, for example, said he is "extraordinarily thrilled" to have Zimmerman on staff.

Charles Bronfman, another major philanthropist and Birthright cofounder, called Zimmerman a "terrific, terrific catch for Birthright.

"He is a dynamic educator and leader whose talents will be a great blessing for Birthright Israel," Bronfman said.

Others in the Jewish community feel less blessed.

The appointment comes on the heels of another controversy surrounding the program: the fact that two of Birthright's top lay leaders wrote pardon letters on behalf of financier Marc Rich, who gave $5 million to the organization.

It also comes at a time when rabbis and Jewish professionals are in sharp demand.
Zimmerman led the HUC from 1996 until last December, when he resigned after being suspended for a minimum of two years from the Reform movement's Central Conference of American Rabbis on the recommendation of its ethics committee.

The CCAR never disclosed full details of the case leading to Zimmerman's suspension, under which he is not permitted to serve as a congregational rabbi.

However, officials said it had to do with "personal relationships" before Zimmerman became president of the HUC that violated guidelines concerning "sexual ethics and sexual boundaries."

His resignation shocked many in the Reform world, where Zimmerman was a popular and respected leader known for his abilities as a spokesman, educator and administrator.

According to several sources -- including Birthright Israel officials -- it is believed that Zimmerman had an extramarital affair with a congregant more than 15 years ago, while he was rabbi of Central Synagogue in New York.

However, CCAR officials who reviewed the case, which was spurred by a complaint from an individual, have refused to confirm or deny the reports.

Zimmerman refused to be interviewed for this story. He issued a statement Thursday thanking Bronfman and Birthright for their support.

Rabbi Paul Menitoff, the CCAR's executive vice president and a member of the ethics committee that recommended Zimmerman's suspension, declined to discuss the case, saying only that Zimmerman is "very talented, and he'll contribute significantly to the development" of Birthright.

Despite Zimmerman's high profile and the notoriety of his suspension -- it was covered in the New York Times and several other major dailies -- Birthright actively recruited him for the job.

Steinhardt, who first approached Zimmerman, said he knows Zimmerman from his days at Central Synagogue, where Steinhardt was a member.

Steinhardt said he is "not in the slightest" concerned about the fact that the CCAR suspended Zimmerman for sexual misconduct.

"From all that I knew, it seemed like a remarkably harsh response to an event that occurred more than 15 years ago," Steinhardt said.

Yoffie recently criticized Birthright for accepting money from Rich. The UAHC is one of many organizations that send young people to Israel under Birthright's auspices.

Rabbi Shira Stern, a former co-coordinator of the CCAR's Women's Rabbinic Network, said she does not have a problem with Zimmerman's new role.

Weidman Schneider of Lilith rejected the notion that a professional at Birthright Israel should be held to a laxer moral standard than the president of HUC or a congregational rabbi.

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Matter of concern

By Joseph Aaron

Chicago Jewish News - April 13, 2001

It's getting worse and worse.

Even worse, nobody seems to care.

A very wise man, Rabbi David Hartman of Jerusalem, once said a very wise thing. He said that it didn't worry him so much that only 20 percent of American Jews have visited Israel. What worried him very much, he said, is that the other 80 percent don't seem to feel guilty about it.

Doing wrong is bad enough, he said. Not feeling guilty about doing wrong is when you're in real trouble.

Which is why I believe it more than fair to say that the Jewish people are in real trouble.

I know, you're sick of me saying it. Sick of the fact that for the last couple of months, I've written so much about Marc Rich and all the big Jews who helped him out, sick of hearing how numb our Jewish leaders and Jewish organizations have become to what Jewish values are all about.

Frankly, I'm sick of writing about it. There are lots of other things I have something to say about. But when your house is on fire, your mind tends to focus on that.

And I believe it no exaggeration to say our Jewish house is on fire. And the fact that so many of us continue on, oblivious or uncaring, makes it all the worse.

Every day brings new evidence both of how low we have sunk and of how little we seem to care about that.

Last week, brought mind-blowing evidence of that. Brought, in fact, two mind-blowing pieces of evidence.

The first involved Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman, who, until last December, was the president of the Hebrew Union College, the Reform movement's seminary. Zimmerman, a popular and talented leader, resigned after the Central Conference of American Rabbis, Reform's rabbinic organization, suspended him and barred him from rabbinical service for a minimum of two years, because he violated guidelines concerning Å¨sexual ethics and sexual boundaries.

In a Jewish world where sexual abuse and harassment is more common than we'd like to think, and where it is almost never punished even when it is discovered, the Reform movement deserves much credit for taking the action it did, especially against such a high official.

That was then, this is now. Last week, Birthright Israel hired Zimmerman for one of its very top positions.

That's right, Birthright Israel, the program aimed at keeping young Jews Jewish by sending them on free trips to Israel, has hired as its executive vice president someone who only three months ago was barred from serving as a rabbi because of sexual misconduct.

Exactly what message does that send young Jews?

Birthright is designed to get young Jews to be Jewishly involved. Is this how to do it?

Two words. Symbolism. Responsibility.

Judaism is big on symbolism and for good reason. Symbols are powerful things, are very effective ways of transmitting messages and values and ideas and beliefs.

What hiring Zimmerman symbolizes is that Birthright doesn't take violating sexual boundaries and ethics very seriously, easily forgives it, doesnÅ¨t care very much about it. What hiring Zimmerman symbolizes is that it matters more that he's a good fund-raiser and an efficient bureaucrat than that he besmirched his position as a rabbi and committed a very serious sin.

But then that should not surprise anyone considering how little Birthright seems to care about Jewish values and ethics. And that shouldn't surprise anyone considering that Birthright is the creation of billionaire and king of the Jews Michael Steinhardt.

I know you're sick of hearing me pick on Steinhardt. After all, he's a great guy since, after all, he gives millions of dollars to Jewish causes and has invented a bunch of Jewish organizations the last few years.

Never mind that Steinhardt has said that he envisions a Judaism where G-d and religion are off to the side, never mind that Jewish values seem to be secondary to him as he treats Judaism as another mutual fund to control and manipulate.

No, he's a great guy since he gives so much money because, after all, that's what makes you a great guy. He should be thus immune from criticism, say those either afraid of losing funding or those who see funding as what makes someone beyond reproach.

Zimmerman was actively recruited for Birthright by none other than Michael Steinhardt who said he is ¨extremely thrilled¨ to have him. He also said he is not in the slightest concerned about the fact that Zimmerman was suspended for sexual impropriety.

Not surprising that Steinhardt should feel that way, considering it was just this January that Steinhardt literally shone a spotlight on Marc Rich, as Rich sat in the VIP section at a mega-event for Birthright in Jerusalem, attended by thousands of young, impressionable, searching Jews. Young Jews who saw Birthright honor Rich. Rich being someone, please remember, who is the biggest tax cheat in American history, who has renounced his American citizenship, who has been indicted on 51 counts of tax evasion, racketeering and violating sanctions against trade with Iran.

Birthright honored him despite all that, because Michael Steinhardt said the charges against Rich were "no source of concern."

Evidently, Steinhardt doesn't concern easily. Not about Rich and now not about Zimmerman.

Evidently, he isn't concerned about what it says to young Jews, says about Judaism to hire Zimmerman for a powerful, high-profile, high-paying job at Birthright only three months after he was suspended for sexual impropriety.

Symbolism. And responsibility.

Taking responsibility for one's misdeeds is something we all need to do and is something Jewish leaders and Jewish organizations especially need to do. For taking responsibility is not only important for the soul of the individual involved, it is vital for the soul of the community.

I don't say Zimmerman should never work in the Jewish community ever again or that he should be punished forever. Tshuva, doing repentance, seeking and receiving forgiveness, is an integral part of Judaism.

But also an integral part of Judaism and of Jewish life is that one should feel the consequences of wrongdoing. ThatÅ¨s especially true when you're a leader and what you do influences so many, the price you pay sends an important signal about the consequences of wrong behavior.

But it's no consequences at all for Sheldon Zimmerman. Three months after been found guilty of violating sexual boundaries and ethics and heÅ¨s got a big new job and the blessing of the biggest of the big hitters in the Jewish world today.

Think, as Steinhardt clearly didn't, about the message that sends about how much ethics matters in Judaism today, to Jewish leaders and Jewish organizations today. The message it sends about whatÅ¨s important, about what the Jewish community values and what it turns a blind eye to. Marc Rich's criminal misdeeds are Å¨no source of concern," says the most powerful Jew around; Sheldon Zimmerman's sexual misconduct is "not of the slightest concern"

It was interesting to me that the news this week also brought a story about Clem Haskins, the former basketball coach at the University of Minnesota. The story was that the NCAA has barred him from coaching because of his role in an academic fraud scandal, in which some players had their class papers written for them.

Because of that, Haskins cannot coach on the collegiate level until 2007.

Think about the message that sends. Don't think there is a lot of symbolic value in that to any other coach who might contemplate helping his players cheat? Don't think there is a strong message there that rules matter and that violating them will mean being punished, paying a real price.

The NCAA understands the importance of that and you can bet that Clem Haskins does as well. And if he doesn't yet, he has six years to do so. Zimmerman was off for three months. How serious, one wonders, does he take the wrong he did when he is so rewarded so fast. What does that tell him was the cost of his wrongdoing, the weight the Jewish community gave to it? Who is to say he won't do it again since he got off so easy this time. And who is to say others in the Jewish world who see how little what Zimmerman did mattered, won't also sin.

The NCAA gave Clem Haskins six years. The Jewish world gave Shelly Zimmerman three months.

What, one wonders, does that say to all those young Jews at Birthright, who see Marc Rich treated as a hero and who now see that you can be found guilty of sexual misconduct and be rewarded with a big job only three months later, pay no price, suffer no consequences. Birthright is designed to send messages about Judaism to young Jews. Sadly, it seems it is ¨no source of concern¨ what those messages are.

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The Year In Review For U.S. Jewry, the year included soul-searching, solidarity ad scandal.

By Julie Wiener

Jewish Journal - September 14, 2001

At the start of the Jewish year last Rosh Hashana, American Jews seemed on the cusp of fulfilling all their dreams. This year the major terrorist attack on American soil will no doubt have overshadowed every other event of the year.

Last year, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), the first Jew to appear on a major party presidential ticket, was running for vice president. And while his religious speeches at times seemed to threaten the church-state wall most American Jews revere, Lieberman's Jewishness generally was considered more an asset than a liability in swaying undecided Christian voters.

Even before Lieberman, Jewish leaders had grown accustomed to unprecedented access to the White House under President Bill Clinton, whose dream of Israeli-Palestinian peace seemed about to bear fruit.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak had engineered a Lebanon withdrawal expected to ameliorate Israel's longtime pariah status in the United Nations, and he seemed on the verge of signing a deal with the Palestinians.

With external threats vanishing, American Jewry appeared free to focus on the decade-long struggle to strengthen Jewish identity. Already, panicky rhetoric about continuity and intermarriage had fallen out of vogue in mainstream Jewish circles, replaced by talk of "renaissance and renewal" and "Jewish journeys."

But by the end of the holidays, fortunes and morale had plummeted.

The Palestinians' rejection of Barak's Camp David offer suddenly grew into a violent uprising marked by stone throwing, mortar attacks, suicide bombings and drive-by shootings.

The dramatically changed climate sparked confusion and soul-searching among the mainstream American Jewish community. Words like "peace" and "partnership" gave way to the mantra of "solidarity," although few agreed just how solidarity could best be demonstrated.

Instead, Israel criticized American Jews for being sluggish to rush to its defense, while Jewish leaders privately grumbled about the Israeli government's failure to articulate a clear plan of action or make its case to the world media.

American Jewish college students, many of them ignorant about Israel, were caught unprepared for a wave of anti-Israel demonstrations on campuses.

The federation system's United Jewish Communities, still stumbling for direction and vision as it completed a lengthy and costly merger, pledged to send solidarity missions, talked about a special fundraising campaign and planned a national rally, which will take place Sept. 23 in New York.

But in the end, no one could agree on a focus for the fundraising campaign, and the 2,600 people who traveled to Israel on UJC solidarity missions couldn't make up for the thousands of individuals and Jewish groups that canceled trips, leaving Israel's tourism industry in a shambles.

Tensions over solidarity intensified in June, when the Reform movement — saying that it "never uses other people's children to make a political or ideological point" — canceled its summer youth trips to Israel.

Around the same time, the American team for the Maccabiah Games, the Jewish Olympics, urged Israel to postpone this summer's event, though it ultimately agreed to send a team. The Reform movement resumed trips to Israel this fall, citing improved security measures for group trips.

Israel was not the only locus of angst.

In what was the most maddeningly close and prolonged presidential election in U.S. history, elderly Florida Jews accidentally voting for Patrick Buchanan — a far-right politician often accused of anti-Semitism — may have cast the decisive "butterfly ballots" against the first Jewish vice president.

When George W. Bush entered the White House in January, he installed the

least-Jewish Cabinet in years and brought a right-wing agenda that rankled most Jewish groups.

Just days after Bush's inauguration, high-ranking Jewish leaders found themselves at the center of a national scandal over Clinton's last-minute pardon of fugitive Jewish financier Marc Rich.

Rich, who allegedly flouted trade embargoes with Iran and bilked the U.S. government of millions of dollars in taxes, had donated generously to scores of Israeli and American Jewish groups and was one of 14 individuals to give $5 million to Birthright Israel, an international partnership sending young Jews on free trips to Israel.

Lobbying and letters from Rich's beneficiaries, along with advocacy from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, helped obtain the controversial pardon. Among the friends of Rich were Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League; Marlene Post of Hadassah and Birthright Israel; mega-philanthropist and Birthright Israel founder Michael Steinhardt; and Rabbi Irving "Yitz" Greenberg, chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council and president of Steinhardt's Jewish Life Network.

Greenberg's pardon letter, sent out on Holocaust museum letterhead, infuriated several members of Congress and the museum's board, who unsuccessfully tried to force him to resign.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Reform movement's Union of American Hebrew Congregations, was the only mainstream Jewish leader to speak out forcefully on the Rich matter, saying Rich's support from the Jewish community was "bought" and that the Jewish community failed an "important moral test" by participating in Rich's campaign.

Other scandals also rocked the community.

The Orthodox Union confronted public revelations that a high-ranking employee, Rabbi Baruch Lanner, was accused of sexually abusing more than 20 teenagers in the O.U.'s youth group.

An umbrella for hundreds of Orthodox synagogues and a kashrut-certification powerhouse, the O.U. appointed an independent commission to investigate the matter, and the three employees most directly involved in the matter resigned.

However, some angry Orthodox congregants accused top officials of knowingly covering up the issue for years. Others criticized the Orthodox Union for not making public the commission's full 332-page report.

In another rabbinic sexual misconduct issue, one of Reform Jewry's titans, Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman, was suspended from the movement's Central Conference of American Rabbis for two years. Zimmerman resigned as president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, although his misconduct — the details of which were never disclosed — had occurred before he took the HUC job.

A few months later, Birthright Israel raised some eyebrows when it hired Zimmerman as executive vice president of its U.S. operations.

There were many leadership challenges in Jewish organizations. "The major institutions of North American Jewish life — federations, synagogues and national agencies — are all sort of in a situation in which that which they relied upon in the past is no longer fully relevant or workable, and yet a new set of identities and functions aren't very clear," according to Larry Moses, president of the Wexner Foundation.

One of the year's sources of energy and hope, however, was Birthright Israel, despite its ties to the Rich and Zimmerman affairs. The group sent approximately 14,000 young Jews on free trips to Israel this winter and spring, though it had to deplete its once-long waiting lists to fill plane seats.

Several Jewish leaders started speaking of Birthright not just as a potential solution to assimilation, but as an incubator to identify potential Jewish educators and rabbis.

Barely noticed by Israelis last year, the Diaspora 20-somethings were welcomed to Israel this year with open arms.

While some lamented the fact that the crisis in Israel distracted organizations from strategic planning and domestic soul-searching, the Jewish "renaissance" continued.

Several new day schools opened throughout the country, increasing numbers of adults enrolled in Jewish courses and a piece of feminist Midrash — Anita Diamant's "The Red Tent" — became a national best seller.

Eighteen Reform synagogues signed on to Synagogue 2000, a rigorous program that helps congregations rethink their missions and meet their members' spiritual needs, and a large multi-denominational bloc of New York-area synagogues is expected to begin the program this fall.

The UJC and Charles and Lynne Schusterman Foundation convened the first national conference on outreach to unmarried Jews in their 20s and 30s, a growing and largely unaffiliated demographic group.

But new research findings highlighted one potential challenge to outreach efforts: the ideological chasm between the institutions and most American Jews. A national survey showed that more than half of American Jews believe it is "racist" to oppose intermarriage and that rabbis should officiate at marriages between Jews and non-Jews.

Such views run counter to the teachings of even the most liberal of Jewish streams: less than half of Reform and Reconstructionist rabbis — the only rabbis permitted to do so — officiate at mixed marriages. If anything, Reform is moving closer to tradition, this year approving more rigorous guidelines for conversion to Judaism than had previously been the norm.

Other heavily discussed research — notably Steven M. Cohen and Arnold Eisen's "The Jew Within" and Bethamie Horowitz's "Connections and Journeys" — showed that most American Jews are very individualistic in how they express their Jewishness, and are not necessarily interested in the obligations demanded by traditional Jewish institutions like synagogues.

"We are beginning to understand that Jewish identity is much more complicated than people thought and can't just be measured in candles lit or ritual behavior,'' said Rabbi Rachel Cowan, director of the Nathan Cummings Foundation's Jewish Life Program.

How far that understanding will advance in the year that begins this September remains to be seen.

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NATIONAL DESK

Suspended Rabbi Quits Seminary Presidency

By Gustav Niebuhr

New York Times - December 7, 2000

(Correction Appended)

Rabbi Zimmerman's resignation was first reported yesterday in The Cincinnati Enquirer and The Dallas Morning News.

Rabbi Menitoff said the decision to suspend Rabbi Zimmerman was ''very difficult and painful for everyone involved.''

''Transitionally, we'll be fine,'' Mr. Lehman said. ''We have a strong faculty that will carry this institution through this tribulation.''

Correction: December 20, 2000, Wednesday An article on Dec. 7 about the resignation of Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman as president of the seminary for the Reform Jewish movement in the United States misstated its name. It is Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, not ''of Learning.''

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Sex abuse by clerics is crisis of many faiths

While sexual misconduct has rocked many religions, leaders of some have acted far more quickly than others.

By Teresa Watanabe

Los Angeles Times - March 25, 2002

The wave of clergy sex scandals now engulfing the Roman Catholic Church has battered other denominations as well, producing an uneven record of response that ranges from the Episcopal Church's aggressive and detailed policies to the Southern Baptist Convention's widespread lack of written standards.

In the last decade, clergy sexual misconduct has been exposed in virtually every faith tradition. National studies have shown no differences in its frequency by denomination, region, theology or institutional structure.

Mainline Protestant denominations have generally taken the earliest and most aggressive measures against clergy abuse and fundamentalist churches the least, according to Gary Schoener, a Minneapolis psychotherapist who has handled more than 2,000 cases of clergy sexual abuse over the past 10 years. Rabbis began working on their policies more recently.

The Roman Catholic response has varied dramatically, in part because each of the 195 American dioceses operates independently. One of the first to take action was the Seattle Archdiocese, which in the early 1980s began exposing the problems and commissioning training materials. By contrast, as recently as January, church officials in Boston were accused of having routinely assigned as many as 80 priests suspected of molesting minors to different churches. It was the Boston cases that sparked the current national furor over priestly sexual abuse.

In faith after faith, the problem of clergy misconduct was exposed during the past 10 to 15 years because victims began stepping forward, plaintiffs began winning large awards and insurers began demanding policies to prevent abuse.

"Victims found their voices, and when they couldn't find justice in the church, they looked for alternatives in the legal system and started to sue," said Elizabeth Stellas, an expert on clergy misconduct who helped pioneer programs on it with the inter-religious Center for the Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence in Seattle.

Among Protestants, the landmark case involved a woman who accused the Episcopal Diocese and the presiding bishop in Colorado of covering up the sexual misconduct of her priest. When the jury found the church liable and ordered church leaders to pay her $1.2 million in 1991, "that changed the Protestant game completely," Schoener said, "because it opened the door for higher-ups to be responsible."

Until then, he said, it had been thought nearly impossible to win awards against Protestant regional and national bodies. That's because, unlike the Catholic Church hierarchy, in which priests are assigned by diocesan officials, most Protestant congregations, with the exception of Methodists, hire their own pastors. Higher officials had been able to argue that they were not liable for bad hiring decisions, and individual congregations that were responsible often lacked the deep pockets to warrant major judgments.

After the Colorado case, however, national Episcopal Church officials were told by their insurers to develop policies on misconduct by 1993 -- and to complete initial training throughout the dioceses in a year, according to the Rev. Beverly Factor, sexual misconduct officer for the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles.

The training, which includes guidelines, videos and discussion on such topics as who are abusers and how to maintain boundaries, is required for all priests, along with staff and laity who work with youth.

"Church insurance gave us that extra nudge and said we had to do something because they wouldn't be able to sustain [these awards]," Factor said.

The Episcopal Church has what many experts regard as some of the finest policies -- and aggressive enforcement of them -- among religious institutions. One striking characteristic is openness. Diocesan officials both inform the affected congregation of a priest's misconduct and list the names of priests suspended or deposed in their annual yearbook. By contrast, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles has acknowledged the dismissals of several priests for sexual abuse, but declines to identify them or even say how many were involved.

In the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, recently retired Bishop Frederick H. Borsch said he recalled two cases of clergy abuse involving minors during his tenure, which began in 1988 and ended in December.

In one 1994 case involving a Palmdale priest and two teenage victims, Borsch wrote a letter to the affected congregants informing them of the problems within days of the priest's arrest, and eventually revoked his ordination in orders known as deposition. Diocesan officials made both documents available to reporters.

National policies have also been adopted by most other mainline Protestant denominations, including the Methodists, Presbyterians and Lutherans. In Northern California, the United Methodist Church has asked one its experts, Karen McClintock, to offer workshops on sexual misconduct for clergy and laity this summer. The sessions are to be given at 14 locations and delivered in 17 languages.

McClintock and others argue that traditions that ordain women and place them in positions of leadership have been more aggressive in confronting the problems.

"The movement of women into positions of leadership, and the general change of culture that brought, has reshaped our thinking," agreed Rabbi Sanford Ragins of Leo Baeck Temple in Los Angeles, who served as chairman of the Reform rabbinate's ethics and appeals committee for five years.

Ragins said the Central Conference of American Rabbis began addressing the issue in the last five years, in part as a reaction to media reports of six-figure legal judgments against the Episcopal and Catholic churches for clergy misconduct cases. In 1998, the conference issued detailed new guidelines on how to report, respond to, investigate and adjudicate allegations of sexual misconduct. Suspension or expulsion of rabbis must be reported in the conference newsletter, and offenders are barred from using the rabbinical placement service to look for new jobs.

Ragins, who headed the committee when Hebrew Union College president Sheldon Zimmerman was ousted for sexual misconduct in 2000, said one or two allegations surface a year. He said he never handled a case involving misconduct with minors.

The Conservative movement is currently working on policies, and the Orthodox movement has been recently rocked by a case involving Baruch Lanner, a nationally known youth official who was indicted last year in New Jersey on charges of sexually abusing teens. The case was first reported by the New York-based Jewish Week newspaper in stories that detailed allegations by scores of teens of sexual, physical and psychological torment. It has forced the resignation of the Orthodox Union's top official and led to the development of new policies.

At least one Jewish researcher says that sexual misconduct is still routinely covered up by rabbis. Charlotte Rolnick Schwab, a New York psychotherapist and author of a forthcoming book on rabbis and sex abuse, said she has received hundreds of complaints from women across all movements and still sees rabbis denying them publicly. Congregations themselves sometimes exacerbate the problems, she said.

In one recent case involving a Florida rabbi convicted of using the Internet to find boys and sexually abuse them, congregant support prompted the judge to sentence him to six years in prison instead of the maximum 60 years, Schwab said. "It's outrageous."

Similar charges have been leveled against the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest of the Baptist bodies in the United States. Dee Ann Miller, a victim's advocate and author of books about the topic, said she had received complaints from victims in 30 states, half of them involving minors. She said church officials have not been responsive.

When she first told church officials about her own sexual assault by a Southern Baptist missionary in Africa several years ago, Miller said, she was told by two leaders that it was at least partly her fault.

In a 1993 survey by the Journal of Pastoral Care, 14 percent of Southern Baptist ministers surveyed said they had engaged in inappropriate sexual behavior, 70 percent said they knew a minister who had and 80 percent said they lacked written guidelines.

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist ethics committee, said the convention's churches are fully autonomous and probably did not adopt written policies because it was obvious that sexual misconduct was wrong. He said training about sexual misconduct is conducted at Southern Baptist seminaries, which produce about half of the convention's clergy, and that the cases he knows about led to swift removal or resignation of the guilty party.

"Most Baptist ministers know sexual misconduct is a career-ending move," he said.

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GesherCity Board of Advisors

The Gateway - GesherCity Newsletter - Edition 2.1 Winter 2002

We have recently formed the GesherCity Board of Advisors. Our objective is twofold: (1) to provide strategic advice and feedback; and (2) to bring together a mix of leaders who care about making it easier for young adults to get connected to their communities. We have sought and continue to seek advisors who hold top positions in young adult-relevant organizations throughout the Jewish community, and who represent up and coming young adult leaders with direct experience in the challenges GesherCity is addressing.

A broad range of community leaders has come together, including:

Barry Shrage, Combined Jewish Philanthropies
Eugene Ribakoff, American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman, birthright israel
Stephen Solender, United Jewish Communities
Elizabeth Minkin, The Grandchildren of Harvey and Lyn P. Meyerhoff Philanthropic Fund
Richard Joel, Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life
Bonnie Lipton, Hadassah
*Lynn Schusterman, The Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation

Gesher City is excited to have the support and commitment of these terrific individuals. We intend to utilize this Board to refine our global strategy, foster young adult community collaboration, and ensure the benefits of our services to the young adult community. We plan to have ongoing, informal interactions with our Board as well as conference call updates and get-togethers on an as-needed basis.

We thank these leaders for their interest and look forward to their continuing involvement in GesherCity's growth and success.

Sincerely,

Benjamin Gordon

Founder and Chairman, GesherCity

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Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman Appointed Head of Renaissance and Renewal Pillar of UJC

United Jewish Communities - February 18, 2003

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: H. Glenn Rosenkrantz, UJC Media Relations

212.284.6572 glenn.rosenkrantz@ujc.org

New York -- February 18, 2003 -- Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman, former Executive Vice President of birthright israel and former President of Hebrew Union College -- Jewish Institute of Religion, was named today as United Jewish Communities (UJC) Vice President, Jewish Renaissance and Renewal, effective March 1, 2003.

Rabbi Zimmerman will oversee and direct UJC's Renaissance and Renewal Pillar, one of four main areas of focus of UJC, dedicated to developing programming for the North American Jewish Federation system to strengthen and enrich Jewish life, learning and continuity in communities across the continent.

Announcing the appointment, UJC President and Chief Executive Officer Stephen H. Hoffman said: "Rabbi Zimmerman brings to UJC a wealth of experience and success from years of engagement in these issues -- on the local level as a rabbi, and nationally as a respected religious leader. UJC and the Jewish federations will benefit greatly from his background, insights and vision of vibrant Jewish life."

Rabbi Zimmerman most recently served as Executive Vice President of birthright israel, a program that to date has afforded more than 40,000 young Jewish adults a free trip to the Jewish homeland in order to forge a connection between them and the land and people of Israel. The program is supported by UJC and the Jewish Federations of North America, the Israeli government, and private philanthropists.

From 1996 to 2000, Rabbi Zimmerman served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, directing the college's four campuses in Cincinnati, Jerusalem, Los Angeles, and New York. He has served as senior rabbi at Temple Emanu-El of Dallas and Central Synagogue of New York City.

"There exists a genuine excitement about pockets of Jewish energy, commitment and renewal throughout North America," Rabbi Zimmerman said. "Our task will be to further the work of our federation communities in intensifying Jewish awareness and knowledge, commitment and activity. We shall work with local federations, synagogue movements, continentally and locally, with all who share our commitment to a Jewish future here in North America and to an ongoing partnership with our brothers and sisters in Israel. The ongoing creative and soulful life of our people and heritage is our priority. For me, personally, this is an extraordinary and exciting challenge, opportunity and privilege."

Marion Blumenthal, Chair of the UJC Renaissance and Renewal Pillar, said: "Rabbi Zimmerman is an excellent choice to give the Pillar outstanding professional leadership. His vast experience -- in synagogue life, denominational leadership, Jewish education and birthright israel -- speaks to his knowledge, wisdom and ability to advocate for and guide the Renaissance and Renewal agenda. I very much look forward to working with him."

Since its establishment in 2000, the Renaissance and Renewal Pillar has been managed and staffed by the Jewish Education Service of North America (JESNA), under the direction of Dr. Jonathan Woocher, JESNA President, in alliance with UJC. Upon Rabbi Zimmerman's arrival, Renaissance and Renewal Pillar operations will occur wholly within UJC.

"I am grateful and appreciative to Jonathan Woocher and JESNA for their willingness and ability to guide the Renaissance and Renewal Pillar through its first and formative years of activity," Hoffman said. "Now that it is firmly established, its future successes in enriching and revitalizing Jewish life and education will be achieved under the UJC umbrella."

United Jewish Communities (UJC) represents 156 Jewish Federations and 400 independent communities across North America. Through the UJA Federation Campaign, UJC provides life-saving and life-enhancing humanitarian assistance to those in need, and translates Jewish values into social action on behalf of millions of Jews in hundreds of communities in North America, in towns and villages throughout Israel, in the former Soviet Union, and 60 countries around the world. Through the Israel Emergency Campaign (IEC), United Jewish Communities (UJC) and the Jewish Federations of North America, in cooperation with their overseas partners, The Jewish Agency (JAFI) and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), are providing human welfare, social and economic assistance and other types of support to Israelis, many of them victims of terror, as they endure a period of extreme challenge.

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Amid abuse reports, Conservatives issue new guidelines on harassment

By Joe Berkofsky

JTA - January 21, 2004

New York -- Moving to combat reported sexual harassment and abuse in Conservative synagogues, the movement's congregational body is issuing a new set of guidelines to deal with the problem.

The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism unveiled the non-binding guidelines on its Web site last week in response to what Rabbi Jerome Epstein, the organization's executive vice president, said were a series of reports of "abusive behavior" by clergy and synagogue staff.

"It wasn't widespread, but over the past 17 months I've heard of 15 to 16 cases," Epstein told JTA. "Some of it may have bordered on sexual" harassment, he added, and some cases "were hushed up."

"The more this is out in the open, the better the chances will be of diminishing it," he said.

In proposing the guidelines, the association of more than 800 Conservative synagogues in North America joins several congregational and rabbinic bodies in the other major denominations that have issues similar standards over the past decade.

The move also comes more than a year after the culmination of one of the most highly publicized sex-abuse cases to hit the Jewish community, that of Orthodox youth leader Rabbi Baruch Lanner.

In fact, some of the new guidelines reflect efforts to grapple with fallout from the Lanner case.

Lanner, 54, of Fair Lawn, N.J., a regional director of the National Conference of Synagogue Youth, was sentenced to seven years in prison in October 2002 for sexually abusing teenage girls and women and physically abusing boys and girls as a principal of a New Jersey yeshiva.

The case drew fire in part because a report by an investigative commission of the youth group's parent organization, the Orthodox Union, criticized O.U. leaders for failing to intervene even though they knew of the abuse allegations for several years.

Other instances have surfaced involving sexual misconduct and inappropriate behavior by Jewish clergy:

"An Orthodox chaplain, Rabbi Israel Kestenbaum, 55, of Highland Park, N.J., was caught in an undercover sting and pleaded guilty last August to charges of trying to arrange a sexual tryst with someone he met over the Internet who he thought was a 13-year-old girl.

"Reform Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman, 58, resigned as president of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Manhattan in December 2000 after HUC said he had carried on "personal relationships" with members of his congregation while serving as a pulpit rabbi.

"Cantor Howard Nevison, 61, of a prominent New York City Reform synagogue, Temple Emanu-el, was accused of molesting a young nephew and remains on trial.

"Cantor Robert Shapiro, 69, of the Reform Temple Beth Am in Randolph, Mass., was charged with raping and molesting a mentally challenged woman.

"A Conservative rabbi, Sidney Goldenberg, 58, of Petaluma, Calif., pleaded no contest in February 1997 to charges of sexually molesting a Bat Mitzvah student.

Other charges against Jewish clergy have surfaced as well, including one incident that Epstein said helped spark the latest United Synagogue move.

Rabbi Richard Marcovitz, 66, of Oklahoma City, pleaded guilty last March to groping two women and two girls at the Solomon Schechter Academy at his Emanuel Synagogue. He was sentenced to 20 years in jail.

However serious, reports of such cases have remained limited and haven't approached the proportions of the Catholic Church's clergy abuse scandals, which have generated hundreds of charges nationally and sparked multimillion-dollar lawsuits by victims.

Since the church scandals surfaced, Epstein said he has worried that the Jewish community "had taken a self-righteous position that at least it's not us."

United Synagogue's new standards not only take aim at inappropriate sexual acts, but also cover a range of behavior that went unchallenged decades ago.

The rules are meant to govern relations between congregants and rabbis, cantors, educators, synagogue professionals and lay leaders.

Behavior such as "leering, catcalls or touching;" "insulting or obscene comments or gestures," and the display of sexually suggestive pictures all would be banned.

The policy also bans the telling of sexual jokes, negative stereotyping and the use of epithets or slurs, as well as hostility directed against a person based on race, religion, color, disability, national origin, marital status or sexual orientation.

The rules also are meant to help rabbis and other clergy avoid situations where they could be open to charges of harassment or abuse. For example, rabbis and others are cautioned to conduct some business that once remained private in public places, never to meet alone with a child or teenager and never to touch them.

"We're concerned about false accusations," said Rabbi Moshe Adelman, who chairs the United Synagogue commission on congregational standards, which helped draft the new guidelines.

The rabbis hope synagogues eventually will adapt the new standards in some form.

"Most synagogues have a clean slate," Adelman said. "My feeling is this ought to be read, studied and adapted so that we can protect" synagogue staff and congregants.

Other groups have proposed or enacted similar rules on sexual conduct in recent years.

The Lanner commission called for Orthodox groups to enact new policies on reporting and dealing with abuse allegations, following charges that NCSY officials turned a blind eye to at least four reports of abuse by Lanner.

In the report's wake, the NCSY enacted broad guidelines against abusive behavior. And last May, the Rabbinical Council of America, an Orthodox rabbinical group, condemned "sexual, physical and emotional violence, abuse or impropriety," and urged the adoption of its own new policies.

The O.U.'s executive vice president, Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, said the RCA is still working on such rules in tandem with the O.U. and that they could be adopted at the RCA's annual meeting in May. Weinreb also lauded the Conservative guidelines and said the O.U. would "follow suit" for itself in the near future.

"I'm sure we will be studying the Conservative movement's document. This is not something that discriminates by ideology," he said.

Aftershocks from the Lanner scandal that reverberated throughout the modern Orthodox world sparked earlier organizational crackdowns. Torah U'mesorah, The National Society for Hebrew Day Schools, adopted an abuse policy in 2002.

Liberal groups issued similar policies much earlier. The Union for Reform Judaism, the movement's congregational arm, approved rules against harassment and offensive conduct a decade ago, while the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association introduced a policy on "breach of trust" in sexual and financial dealings in 1996.

Rabbi Joel Meyers, executive vice president of the Conservative movement's Rabbinical Association, lauded the United Synagogue policy and said an R.A. ethics committee was drafting a similar policy.

Meyers said the group had resisted issuing such a statement for some time, but was bowing to increasing pressure to follow other Jewish groups.

The hesitation came, Meyers said, because R.A. members should be familiar with proper conduct as governed by Jewish law and texts.

"Our code of ethics is the Shulchan Aruch," a compendium of Jewish law, he said.

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Knoxville Jewish Alliance - Washington Conference

Conference Schedule - March 22, 2005

http://www.jewishknoxville.org/content_display.html?ArticleID=99035

2:45-4:15 p.m.

Concurrent breakout sessions, including:

Jewish Eye for the Unaffiliated Guy (or Gal)

Speakers: Seymour Rossel and Sheldon Zimmerman

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Why is the Jewish community still promoting Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman?
Jewish Survivors of Sexual Violence Speaks Out! - November 5, 2005

To whom it may concern:

I read the October 30, 2005 article "Substance abuse focus of Mount Pleasant speech" and was disgusted.

Why is the Jewish community promoting as a religious leader?

Religious leaders who engage in such misconduct should find work outside of the clergy. Such individual have no right to use the title Rabbi. They have no place in the Jewish community in any position of authority.

Allowing such an individual to speak publicly on the topic of abuse (of any sort) and promote him as a Rabbi is simply obscene.

Jewish Whistleblower (JWB)

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Beth Israel installs Cahana Nov. 10 - Friedman concert celebrates event

Jewish Review - November 1, 2006

Congregation Beth Israel will formally install Rabbi Michael Z. Cahana as its 18th Senior Rabbi during Shabbat services at 6 p.m. Nov.10, in the historic main sanctuary.

Rabbi Emeritus Emanuel Rose will ceremonially pass the Torah to Cahana, signifying the continuation of Beth Israel's legacy as the oldest synagogue in Oregon. Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman—Cahana's teacher, mentor and family friend—will deliver the installation address. An Oneg Shabbat will follow the service. The community is invited.

The installation celebration continues on Nov. 11 with a special Torah Study session at 9 a.m. led by Zimmerman, followed by Shabbat services at 10:30 a.m. in Pollin Chapel. A leader in the Reform movement and in the Jewish community for more than 30 years, Zimmerman has held positions at the highest levels of communal and rabbinic service. He served as president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, rabbi of Temple Emanu-El of Dallas, and rabbi of Central Synagogue of New York City. Most recently he was vice president of Jewish Renaissance and Renewal for the United Jewish Communities and executive vice president of birthright Israel.

Zimmerman and his wife live in New Rochelle, N.Y., where Cahana said he was honored to count him as a member of his congregation. Both the study session and the service will take place in Schnitzer Family Center and are open to the community.

On Saturday evening, Nov. 11, Congregation Beth Israel welcomes singer, songwriter and guitarist Debbie Friedman for a special celebratory concert. The legendary Friedman was originally influenced by American popular music of the 1960s and '70s—Peter, Paul and Mary; Judy Collins; Joan Baez; and Joni Mitchell. She in turn has been influencing younger singers and songwriters with her own dynamic style.

Friedman's music is so integrated into synagogue liturgy, that many congregations consider it "traditional." She has performed in hundreds of cities in the United States, Canada, Europe and Israel. She has appeared before numerous conferences for major Jewish organizations.

For part of Friedman's early musical career, she lived in Houston, where she knew Cahana's family—including his father, Rabbi Moshe Cahana.

The concert begins at 7:30 p.m. in the main sanctuary. Tickets are $18 for CBI members and $25 for non-members. For tickets, call CBI at 503-222-1069.

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Reining in Abuse; In jurisdictional jungle, where does the buck stop in misconduct cases?
By Richard Greenberg

JTA - January 10, 2007

NEW YORK (JTA) American Judaism is not a monolith, and that may have implications in the fight against clergy sexual abuse.

On one hand, the mainstream rabbinic organizations have established in-house panels to handle cases of suspected sexual misconduct and other ethics violations by their members. On the other hand, Judaism is highly decentralized, which means individual congregations are largely free to decide how to police themselves in this area.

Consequently there is no guarantee that misconduct cases arising at the synagogue level will find their way to the ethics committees dockets. Even so, several sources said they were confident that serious cases would probably be brought to the attention of denominational-level officials, or the police if necessary.

Whether or not that is actually the case, reactions varied widely to the notion of congregants deciding a sexual misconduct case involving their own rabbi.

That uncomfortable prospect was one of several examined by JTA in this three-month-long investigation of policies that have been drawn up over the past several years to rein in rogue rabbis and others who sexually exploit congregants, students or others.

Rabbi Joel Meyers, executive vice president of the Conservative movement's Rabbinical Assembly, said although shul-goers would probably be too lenient when asked to judge their own rabbi, "they generally understand what must be done."

Psychotherapist and author Charlotte Rolnick Schwab, who believes that most aspects of Judaism's internal adjudication system are dysfunctional, said the prospect of a congregation deciding a rabbi's professional fate is especially troubling.

"The problem of dealing with rabbi-perpetrators of sexual abuse is compounded by the fact that individual synagogues have sole power over hiring and firing their rabbis," Schwab wrote in her 2002 book "Sex, Lies, and Rabbis: Breaking a Sacred Trust." The book continued: "The rabbinic organizations can suspend them from membership, can recommend that they resign. They can also recommend that the synagogues fire them for cause. It is shocking that many of these synagogues, even in the face of several women accusing the rabbi, vote to keep him on."

That said, controversies stemming from allegations of rabbinic abuse are not always clear-cut. They are sometimes complex, shaded with ambiguities and subject to varying interpretations.

In one case, for example, the board of the largest Conservative synagogue in western New York, Buffalo's Temple Shaarey Zedek, voted conditionally in March 1999 to keep its rabbi, A. Charles Shalman, after several female congregants reported that he had touched them inappropriately and had made sexually suggestive comments to them, according to press accounts.

Early the following month, the R.A.'s ethics committee, which had investigated the case, summarized its findings in a letter to Shalman that was obtained by the Forward. The letter said in part: "It is painfully clear that you have violated several principles of rabbinic conduct which have caused harm to certain of the women counseled or taught by you."

The letter continued: "Normally, given the nature of the conduct, we would expect you to withdraw from your congregation." But the committee relented, the letter explained, after learning that the synagogue's board, in its March 1999 vote, had decided to permit Shalman to keep his post "under very strictly defined parameters."

The committe, echoing the board's decision, decided that as a condition of his continued employment at Shaarey Zedek, Shalman must undergo therapy with an R.A.-approved practitioner and report regularly to a rabbinical mentor. It also prohibited him from teaching or counseling women on an individual basis without the permission of the ethics committee.

On Aug. 19, 1999, four months after the R.A. decision was handed down, the membership of Temple Shaarey Zedek voted 232 to 87 to keep Shalman. The text of a motion issued in conjunction with the vote clearing Shalman to remain on the pulpit said in part, as reported in the media, that Shalman had been unjustly victimized by "anonymous allegations and subsequent rumors" after having tried to comfort those "in need of such assistance."

Contacted in late December by JTA, Meyers of the R.A. said Shalman had fulfilled all the requirements mandated by the organization's ethics committee. The case was declared closed in July 2001 and Shalman was "restored to full rabbinic status in the Rabbinical Assembly," according to an R.A. document provided by Shalman. When contacted, he declined comment on his case.

Not just rabbis

Rabbis are not the only religious authority figures who may be accused of victimizing congregants. Cantors, among others, have committed sexually abusive acts, as indicated by several cases, high-profile and otherwise.

In one instance, a woman who was interviewed by JTA, reported being sexually assaulted by her cantor several years ago in a parking lot following a communal event. The woman, who asked that neither her name nor the name of her assailant be used, said she initially did not report the incident to the police after being advised by an acquaintance "to keep it quiet, and keep it in the community."

But as word of the incident spread, the woman said she and her son were soon ostracized by members of the religious community that had once embraced them. They became the targets of a harassment campaign, according to the woman, that included pointed intimations that she and her son might not be Jewish.

"They destroyed my son spiritually," said the woman, now in her mid-40s, her voice breaking. "They ripped the heart of Jerusalem from him and I had to watch it."

Eventually the woman's Jewish bona fides and those of her son were confirmed by an Orthodox beit din, a rabbinic court, sitting in New York, which also advised her to report the sexual assault to the police.

"They did everything right," she said of the beit din.

Felony charges were filed against the cantor, who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count, according to authorities. He was given a one-year suspended sentence, three years probation and was ordered to undergo domestic violence counseling.

Although procedures for adjudicating sexual misconduct complaints against cantors differ from movement to movement, none of these cases are handled by the denominational rabbinic organizations unless perhaps the cantor is also an ordained rabbi.

The Orthodox Union, which has approximately 450 member synagogues in North America, has behavioral standards covering hundreds of organizational employees, but it has no congregational ethics guidelines applying specifically to non-rabbinic clergymen, such as cantors.

"It's a big gap; I can't defend it," said Rabbi Mark Dratch, who chairs the Task Force on Rabbinic Improprieties of the O.U.'s companion organization, the Rabbinical Council of America.

Conceding that such a jurisdictional loophole does exist, Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, executive vice president of the O.U., added in an e-mail that "the OU does not have jurisdiction over cantors, or over non-rabbinic members of individual synagogues who may misbehave, but urges synagogue leadership to educate itself about such matters and bring breaches of sexual conduct to legal authorities when appropriate, or to appropriate mental health or social service agencies when necessary."

If not the O.U. or the RCA, it was not immediately apparent which Orthodox organization would in fact have jurisdiction over a sexual misconduct complaint involving a cantor. Orthodox cantorial organizations do exist, but their representatives said they are not equipped to handle ethics complaints of this type.

As for the other denominations surveyed, the Reform and Conservative movements have cantorial associations that rule on ethics complaints against their members.

Over the past five years, five complaints alleging sexual misconduct have been filed with the Conservative movement's Cantors Assembly, resulting in the expulsion of three cantors from the organization. The Reform movement's American Conference of Cantors has received one complaint of sexual harassment since 2004. That complaint was investigated and found to be without merit.

The Reconstructionist movement does not yet have a full-fledged cantorial association and, as a result, most cantors working in that denomination's synagogues belong to either the Conservative or Reform cantorial groups, according to a Reconstructionist spokesman.

Justice delayed

Several of the denominational codes have specific deadlines for promptly dealing with accusations of misconduct, but they apparently are not always followed. In fact, Rabbi Rosalind Gold, chair of the ethics committee of the Reform movement's Central Conference of American Rabbis, identified procedural delays as one of the chief flaws in the system a glitch in the CCAR mechanism that was evident when JTA first investigated rabbinic sexual abuse in 1996. The delays can penalize both victims of abuse and rabbis who are unjustly accused.

In one recent case, a woman maintained that she had waited six months before receiving word that her complaints against a rabbi would be investigated, despite what she characterized as a two-week reporting requirement mandated by the CCAR. The rabbi vigorously denied the allegations against him.

"Things just take too long," Gold said. "Trying to get nine rabbis together for a meeting is really hard. I've seen delays hurt both complainants and rabbis. It puts them through hell."

In the woman's case, the ethics committee following its routine procedures suspended its investigation after it learned that there was litigation involving the rabbi and the complainant.

"We don't want our ethics process to be used as evidence in a court case," Gold explained. "It's not written in the code; it's been the practice since the code was put into place" in 1991. "It doesn't happen often, and usually it involves a divorcing couple with a rabbi spouse."

Regardless of the rationale behind the rule, Jeff Anderson, a Minnesota attorney who has handled hundreds of sex abuse cases against religious organizations, including at least one Jewish institution, said it is simply bad policy.

"If to investigate and get to the bottom of it is the right thing to do at any given point in time, it's the right thing to do at all points in time," Anderson said. "To suspend it because of a civil suit makes it the wrong thing. There's no right way to do the wrong thing."

Still, Gold defended the work of her ethics committee.

"There is no glory in it and a lot of grief," she said. "Our committee is really committed to finding rabbis who shouldn't be practicing. Our process isn't perfect, but there's no old boys network anymore."

But there is a potential downside to the climate of increased vigilance now emerging in the Jewish world.

"Sometimes, somebody doesn't like the rabbi and makes something up to get the rabbi fired," said Susan Grossman, a rabbi at Beth Shalom Congregation, a Conservative synagogue in Columbia, Md.

Grossman cited the instance of a colleague who "wound up getting hauled in and fired" after innocently applying suntan lotion to children.

To guard against such episodes, it is important for denominational decision-makers to be flexible and use common sense, said Meyers of the Rabbinical Assembly.

"You can't always find that in written ethics guidelines," he said, explaining that sexual misconduct "cannot be generalized."

Activities that might disqualify a rabbi for the pulpit cover an enormous range in terms of severity.

"People keep looking for black-and-white solutions to these situations," said Meyers, "and that's not how human relations work. Each situation is different."

Gauging the system

In general, policies on sexual impropriety reflect the intentions of "people of good character and integrity who seem to take the issue seriously," Dratch said. "But sometimes even these people can mishandle cases."

The guidelines, he adds, are "only as good as the people involved in that particular case, and that's part of the problem. They're often not aware of the policies or they're not well trained in this area."

Schwab, the psychotherapist author, said she recently conducted an informal poll of scores of congregants at Conservative and Reform synagogues in Palm Beach County, Fla., and found that none of them were aware of their congregations' policies on sexual misconduct.

Yet even when all parties are well-informed and the system functions "optimally," it does not always dispense justice, according to Reform Rabbi Drorah Setel, an anti-abuse scholar and activist. She argued that when sex abuse victims file complaints against revered communal figures, they always run the risk of being vilified.

"To name the problem is to create the problem," Setel explained. "That's the mentality. Anger is directed at the victim rather than the perpetrator."

The situation might improve, Setel added, if ethics panels had more lay people or more women, or if victims' advocates played a more prominent role in the proceedings anything to redirect the therapeutic focus away from the rabbis themselves. Several denominational policies, for example, encourage rabbis to seek moral rehabilitation through teshuvah, or heartfelt repentance.

"The policies are silent on teshuvah for the congregation," Setel said. "What happens if the congregation shuns the victim? Does the congregation have to do teshuvah? There's a whole process of reintegration into the community that is not even addressed."

Ironically, the role of teshuvah in sexual misconduct cases was raised recently by prominent Reform Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman, who himself had been found by the CCAR to be in violation of the organization's guidelines on "sexual ethics and sexual boundaries."

A former CCAR president, Zimmerman was suspended for two years by the CCAR in 2000. He then resigned as president of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, but went on to become executive vice president of birthright israel and then vice president for Renaissance and Renewal of United Jewish Communities.

Zimmerman's post-suspension hires drew both criticism and praise. He no longer works for UJC.

The CCAR did not disclose full details of the case involving Zimmerman, but several sources interviewed around the time of his suspension said it is believed he had what was characterized by one publication as an "extramarital affair" with a congregant 15 years earlier while he was the rabbi of Central Synagogue in New York.

In 2005, Zimmerman published an article in the CCAR Journal in which he reflected on his case and on his efforts to rehabilitate himself with the help of CCAR-mandated teshuvah "mentors." Praising some aspects of the teshuvah process and criticizing others, Zimmerman wrote that his family "needed and failed to receive communal and collegial care and support."

Attempts to reach Zimmerman for comment were unsuccessful.

Despite these and other criticisms of the still-evolving mechanism for dealing with clergy sexual misconduct, several sources said they see evidence that concern over the problem is beginning to pay off.

Attorney Anne Underwood, for one, said she detects a change in the mind-set of institutional Judaism.

"What I don't hear anymore," said Underwood, who has helped various faith groups formulate ethics policies, "is What do we do to legally cover our asses?: What I'm hearing now is, "What do we do to keep congregations safe and rabbis and cantors healthy?""

On a more practical level, workshops addressing the issue are becoming more commonplace across the denominations. The O.U., for example, featured such a session at its recent biennial convention in Jerusalem. A special beit din has been created in Chicago to adjudicate cases of sexual abuse.

Meanwhile, denominational leaders are placing greater emphasis on education and prevention as effective tools in combating the problem of sexual misconduct among clergymen and other trusted figures. The Union for Reform Judaism, for example, in its May 2005 leadership briefing advised board members of its congregations to ensure the safety of congregants "and reduce your risk of liability" by considering rigorous background checks of employees.

In addition, several rabbinical school curriculums now include courses on sexual misconduct and how to steer clear of it. Yeshiva University is one such school.

"I've seen it work," said psychologist David Pelcovitz, who teaches at Y.U. "I've had young rabbis in the field call me and tell me how they've been able to recognize situations they wouldn't have known how to handle before. I've gotten several calls like that over the last couple years, and it felt great."

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Wednesday, December 06, 2000

Case of Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman

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