By Daphna Berman
Haaretz - July 17, 2006
A
lecture by an American rabbi accused of sexual improprieties by
several of his New York congregants, scheduled to be held in Jerusalem
on Thursday night, was cancelled, following threats of protests and a
flood of complaints, activists said.
Mordechai
Tendler, a scion of a prominent rabbinic family, was expelled
unanimously last year by the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) after
the organization decided that he had "engaged in conduct inappropriate
for an Orthodox rabbi." In March, he was also suspended by the board of
Kehillat New Hempstead, the New York synagogue that he founded.
Tendler, who is currently in Israel, was scheduled to speak Thursday in
the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Har Nof. A protest was scheduled to
take place outside the event.
"This
is definitely a victory," said Leah Marinelli, a former congregant
from New York, Wednesday. Marinelli was one of the first community
members to speak out against the rabbi and convinced some of his alleged
victims to come forward publicly to the RCA.
"We
put out a call for action on Tuesday morning and the next day it was
cancelled and so I am pretty convinced that there is a connection,"
said Vicki Polin, founder of the U.S.-based Awareness Center, the Jewish
Coalition Against Sexual Abuse and Assault."We didn't want him to
recreate in Israel what he had done in Monsey [in New York]."
Both,
however, expressed concern that Tendler would proceed with the lecture
in a smaller and non-publicized location with a core group of
supporters.
Moshe
Siegel, a former congregant who immigrated to Israel some 10 years
ago, was coordinating the lecture and had publicized the event on
various English-language list servers around the country. He was
subsequently flooded with e-mails and phone calls, urging him to cancel
the event. Wednesday afternoon, Siegel posted a message on the list
serves, informing the public that the event was cancelled. He did not
provide a reason and did not respond by press time to Haaretz requests
for further clarification.
Other
community leaders in the U.S. have welcomed the cancellation. Rabbi
Mark Dratch, chair of the RCA's Task Force on Rabbinic Improprieties
said that the move had proven that "there is no place a person can
hide. We're one community and though we are distanced by an ocean, that
doesn't mean that what happens in one place gets ignored by another."
He said that members of Tendler's former community felt "that he
compromised the rabbinate and should not be given the opportunity to
teach Torah publicly," Dratch said.
At
least nine women have come forward against Tendler with claims that he
used his rabbinic authority to solicit sexual favors. According to
allegations, women who approached him with marital problems and sought
spiritual counseling were sexually harassed. Last year, a former
congregant filed a civil lawsuit in Manhattan against Tendler in which
she accused him of giving her "sex therapy" when she went to him for
help. Their affair allegedly took place in his rabbinical study from
2001 to 2005.
Following
the RCA ruling last year, Rabbi Benzion Wosner, head of the Shevet
Levi rabbinical court in Monsey, New York, issued a ruling that Tendler
"can no longer officiate at divorces, weddings ... One should never
allow their wives or daughters to go to him at all including [for]
counseling ... and all his rulings are null and void."
The
allegations against the rabbi, who is married and is the father of
eight children, surfaced three years ago. Tendler's grandfather is the
late Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, one of the leading religious arbiters of the
twentieth century.
Tendler's
attorney, Glen Feinberg, did not have information about the reasons
for the cancellation. "I represent Rabbi Tendler in the lawsuit brought
against him. My representation does not extend to other matters. Thus,
the rabbi does not discuss his travel or lecture plans with me and I
have no information about this." He added, however, that "Rabbi Tendler
completely denies the allegations of sexual misconduct and expects to
be vindicated through the judicial process."
