I get a call: "This is sexual McCarthyism. She writes that Gershon Winkler is accused of cult-like practices. She made that up. You click on "cult-like practices" and you get this stuff about sexual abuse in cults, etc. Anyone looking quickly thinks that that is about Gershon. Disgusting. What did they do in McCarthyism? If somebody supports someone else, you are then put on a list of communist sympathizers."
Gershon Winkler emails me:
Hello, Luke.
I noticed on your site that the infamous JTA article quoting me regarding Gafni is repeated there in the context of the Awareness Center’s mention of me. I just want you to know, that yes, I did have a kid with one of my students, AND I was married to her for 16 years! I was trying to make a point with the JTA reporter but all he recorded was that I got one of my students pregnant. No mention that I had married her two years earlier. The JTA did nothing to correct it after it went to print. I was trying to point out that across-the-board ethics around “power imbalance” in relationships are ludicrous. My father was a college grad rabbi when he married my highschool grad mother. Was this unethical? And then I gave the example of how I married one of my students, and had a child with her. Was that unethical? But the JTA article, again, left out the details, that I’d been married to her. And for 16 years. And the marriage happened two years before the child came into the world.
Anyway, I don’t know how to change this slander.
Maybe you can on your site.
The Awareness Center wants to stress that to the best of our knowledge there have never been any allegations made against Rabbi Gershon Winkler of molesting children or sexually abusing or assaulting any adult women. Rabbi Gershon Winkler is being posted on our web page under the category of “Other”. Rabbi Winkler currently resides in Thousand Oaks, CA.
July 8, 2008 — JTA published the article “Rabbi Fights sexual allegations”, which is about “defrocked" rabbi, Mordechai Gafni’s most recent attempt at becoming a “spiritual leader”. In the article Gershon Winkler “acknowledged that he fathered a child with a student, carried on several "intimate relationships" with students over the years and said he is currently in a relationship with two women.”
According to the ethical codes of every rabbinical organization and also clergy of all major religions, it is considered unethical to have sexual relations with an individual in which there is an imbalance of power. The same can be said about the eithical codes of teachers, medical and mental health professionals.
Winkler went on to tell “JTA that he believes it is wrong to insist on an "across-the-board" ban on sexual relationships involving rabbis and followers, teachers and students, and counselors and patients.”
For more information Rabbi Gershon Winkler go to:
http://www.theawarenesscenter.org/Winkler_Gershon.html (this site is still underconstruction).
For a list of attorney’s that deal with cases of clergy sexual abuse and or professional sexual misconduct go to:
http://www.theawarenesscenter.org/lawyers.html
Marc Gafni, left, visits with author Luke Ford in Salt Lake City on July 3, 2008
A section of Gafni’s new site dedicated to the controversy includes letters on his behalf from several spiritual leaders, attorneys and counselors, as well as the report of a forensic psychologist who administered a polygraph test.
Several references to e-mails and instant messages between Gafni and the Israeli women that supposedly prove the nature of their relationships were not exploitative. The correspondence is not available on the site.
"In each of these relationships, as is usually the case between men and women, there were complex power dynamics in which each side had power and vulnerability," Gafni wrote regarding the Israel controversy. "While I never promised exclusivity to any, in retrospect I see I did fail to recognize two things. First, that my non-exclusivity might in itself be experienced as hurtful. Secondly, that these involvements themselves, and particularly the lack of transparency around them, might be experienced as painful or problematic."
Gafni’s Web site is filled with allusions to his problems and explanations.
"Marc Gafni struggled with the question of whether to teach conventional spiritual wisdom in a conventional spiritual context, or to follow a more post-conventional style of teaching and living," his biography says. "This tension brought great dynamism to his work, but also caused some dissonance."
Now the biography says that Gafni will focus on "intense inner spiritual and psychological reflection on the course of his life" and "partnering with social activist leaders to create a new, grass-roots human rights movement."
"While Marc Gafni will continue teaching, he wishes to do so as a spiritual `artist’ rather than as a rabbi, guru, or formal teacher," the Web site says.
One of Gafni’s defenders is Rabbi Gershon Winkler, a New Mexico rabbi who runs Walking Stick, an organization that combines Jewish teachings with Native American wisdom.
"Do I believe that the women here experienced pain? Yes I do," Winkler wrote in a letter posted on Gafni’s site. "Do I know that this is not a story of abuse of sexual harassment as it was reported in public forums? I am sure it is not. Do I believe that the pain caused by all of us to Rabbi Gafni far exceeds the pain that anyone else can claim to have experienced? Absolutely."
In the letter, Winkler acknowledged that he fathered a child with a student, carried on several "intimate relationships" with students over the years and said he is currently in a relationship with two women.
Many in the Jewish Renewal leadership, he asserted, have engaged in similar sexual behavior, including some who are now critics of Gafni.
Waskow, one of the leading figures in the Renewal movement, rejected that line of argument.
"If there were, years and years ago, people in this or any other movement who did behave in ways that we would now find ethically prohibited, it was precisely because of the experience of the pain and emotional disasters and spiritual disasters created by that kind of behavior that we adopted the ethical rules that now apply," Waskow said.
"Maybe some of that did take place, but we grew enough to decide this was not a good idea," he said. "What he’s describing as hypocrisy is a shift over a 25-year period of time in which our movement and people in our movement grew considerably."
Winkler told JTA that he believes it is wrong to insist on an "across-the-board" ban on sexual relationships involving rabbis and followers, teachers and students, and counselors and patients.
Gafni, he added, is a victim of sexual McCarthyism.
"I think it’s extreme," Winkler said. "I think it’s a sexual ethic that’s made out of paranoia."
