Site Presented By
Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
Why did the Orthodox community ignore three decades' worth of allegations that Rabbi Baruch Lanner abused children in his care? Simple: He was good at his job.
Jul 19, 2000 | Despite potentially monumental Mideast peace talks and increasing Jew-on-Jew violence in Israel, the predominant subject of conversation in Jewish communities for the past several weeks has centered on the National Conference of Synagogue Youth, the youth group run by the Orthodox Union, the central communal organization of Orthodox Judaism.
A spate of investigative articles, which first appeared late last month in New Yorks the Jewish Week, yielded accusations that Rabbi Baruch Lanner, a Jewish educator and NCSY official, had physically, sexually and emotionally abused kids in the group over the past three decades. The stories included the explosive news that the NCSY received numerous complaints about the rabbi throughout his tenure, but did little to investigate the accusations or control Lanner's behavior, let alone take action to bar him from working with children.
As soon as the first article appeared, the Orthodox Union demanded Lanner's resignation from the NCSY and appointed a panel of well-known Jewish figures to investigate the organization. Meanwhile, the Orthodox community, its leaders and laypersons were left to wonder how the NCSY could have looked the other way for three decades as Lanner supposedly kneed boys in the groin and kissed and fondled girls, to mention only some of the specific accusations. Lanner's behavior may well be impossible to understand, but a compelling question remains to be answered by those around him: How could so many people have looked the other way while such improprieties were repeatedly committed?
There is, of course, plenty of blame to go around and many contributing factors to explain the seemingly inexplicable. But part of the answer, I believe, lies in the way the NCSY viewed its mission, and in Lanner's unquestionable success at that mission.
The NCSY is focused on the concept of kiruv, or bringing unaffiliated Jews to a life of strong Jewish observance. When an organization pursues such transcendent goals, it becomes frighteningly easy to judge its missionaries (for that's what Lanner essentially was, a missionary) purely by the success of their mission, and to dismiss all who speak or act against the missionary (Lanner's accusers, and now the Jewish Week for its report) as enemies of the mission or its goal.
The NCSY has never tried to hide its mission. Its Web site explains, "NCSY is a leader in bringing unaffiliated youth an awareness of what Judaism is all about," and claims that the group "is at the forefront of the battle against assimilation." NCSY does not hope to just hold onto Orthodox youth and ensure their continued Jewish observance; it has, quite effectively, reached out to non-Orthodox and unaffiliated Jewish youth and led them to stricter observance of (Orthodox) Jewish law and custom. Essentially, the NCSY is a type of proselytizing organization, despite the fact that its target audience is Jewish.
Lanner was a star of the NCSY, a rabbi so successful in his mission that, even as an increasing number of Orthodox leaders have denounced him in the wake of the accusations, many have continued in their vocal support. One rabbi called Lanner's removal from an NCSY summer program -- a prelude to his ultimate dismissal -- "a devastating loss" for Jewish youth. Letters to the editor printed in the Jewish Week have blasted the newspaper for supposedly endangering the NCSY's kiruv potential, and lamented the fact that many unaffiliated Jews will likely be turned off to the NCSY and the Orthodoxy it advocates because of this news.
I attended several NCSY functions in grade school, and for a brief time was influenced by them. I was a non-Orthodox student at an Orthodox Jewish school and was forever struggling with religion and degrees of observance, having been exposed to Orthodoxy at school and Conservative Judaism at home. I was gradually moving toward stricter Jewish observance, and so the prodding of the NCSY made an impression, encouraging me to try harder to live the lifestyle it advocated.
In the end, despite my growing observance, I soured on the organization, put off by the way it went about accomplishing its goals. I was most uncomfortable with the NCSY ritual of reciting "success stories."
