For those of you who don’t know, there’s a glut of cases now regarding rabbinic sexual abuse. There’s the Renewal Guru, about whom rumors and more have swirled for years–suddenly, now that cases are being brought forward, his community of rabbinic peers is smacking their head and saying, “Oh, gee, if only we had known beforehand!” as though the mere possiblity of imporpriety was shocking, new information. (These are some of the same people that, rather than confronting the famous songwriting guru rebbe when he was a known abuser, simply didn’t hire him to their retreats, but let him continue on abusing others at other retreats). There’s the now-ousted head of the Orthodox organization who was having coercive sex with agunot who went to him for help–and the Israeli Rabbinate is backing him by casting doubt on the org’s conversions now. There’s the head of the yeshiva who hurt countless little boys. I am too angry to say anything productive about these specific cases or the phenomenon in general. JewSchool is covering all the stories pretty thoroughly, check there for more. Props to Mobius for trying to force the Jewish media to, like, cover all this. Thanks to Cole for compiling a list of resources for survivors, found here. (ETA: Oh, and there’s the Forward article now, here. The whole thing is beyond nauseating, the rabbinic apologetics so so so so so problematic and awful. This is not a game, people.)

I am past fed up with the conspiracy of silence in the Jewish community that keeps survivors ashamed, intimidated and afraid to come forward, and the way that we stigmatize people when they actually *do* try to talk about what’s going on. When we expose, say, the Enron guys, it’s brave and righteous. When we try to do the same to our own leaders, it’s all too often labelled leshon hara. I agree that gratuitous leshon hara is not helpful or reccomended, but that’s not the same as speaking the truth, of talking about what really happened, of trying to protect other people from getting hurt. That’s not leshon hara, that’s pikuach nefesh. (And it should be noted that the laws of leshon hara explicitly don’t apply when warning others is necessary to keep them from being hurt/swindled/etc. by the person in question. But I’d say that even given the tremendous health and psychological ramificiations that keeping quiet about abuse suffered can cause, that it’s critical to make a space for people to initiate these kinds of conversations.)

Why did so many of us grow up hearing the refrain, “Jews don’t drink, Jews don’t beat their wives,” from people who either were themselves or had close friends or family members struggling with alcoholism and/or domestic violence? Why do we organize, without hesitation, Shabbos meals for someone with some physical health problems and shrug awkwardly when we hear that someone is disabled by depression? Why is it OK for a woman to talk about the grief of losing a child but not having suffered rape or incest? There are stigmas in the Jewish community that go beyond even casting doubt on some powerful leader. What is it about our unwillingness to hear certain kinds of stories?

This is about a lot of things. There’s the cronyism, the guru-ism, the general tendency in the Jewish world to trust the man who’s been at yeshiva a bunch over the woman (or women, or sometimes younger or less prestigious men/boys). And no, I don’t mean that any rumor is grounds or firing somebody. But I think we need to take allegations seriously, much more seriously than we do, and, you know, investigate them. Even if an incident isn’t punishable by a court of law, or somebody’s choosing not to prosecute–for pete’s sake, people. We. Are. Working. For. God. Our standard of ethics and our demands of our leaders and teachers should be significantly higher than, “doesn’t have a criminal record yet.” Making sure that our leaders’ congregants and students are safe and comfortable around their spiritual leaders must be the first priority, and other considerations–including, yes, “how much Torah they have to give,” needs to be second. Sorry. If he’s that brilliant but can’t keep from hurting people, he can sit alone in his room and write a damn book. Our daughters and sons are not the sacrifical offerings to appease the fires of someone’s “excess of Hesed.” Not giving our children to Moloch is, you know, one of the commandments in the Torah.

In any case, it’s about all of the above, and it’s so so much about the culture of silence and stigma and shame that is so pervasive in the Jewish community. Whose Deity does this culture serve? Whose soul does it nourish?

Well, and whose power does it preserve?