As I reported in 2006 about Rabbi Daniel Gordis:
In 1993, Conservative legal scholar and Jewish Theological Seminary professor Joel Roth was disciplined for having an inappropriate relationship with a male student (reported in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency by Debra Nussbaum-Cohen). I believe that student was Danny Gordis. Gordis and Roth were close during the 1980s and they published responsa (answers to questions about Jewish law) together.
Danny is known for having intense intimate relationships (I am not saying they were necessarily sexual) with his favorite students, be they male or female. “He has a lot of groupies,” says a source. “Mostly women. He always seemed to have the more attractive women students really close to him.”
On Tuesday, the Forward reported that Akiva Roth, a newly hired Hebrew instructor at Yeshiva University, pleaded guilty in 1997 to lewd conduct involving several bar mitzvah students. Omitted in that story and today’s follow-up editorial, however, was another aspect of Roth’s biography: he taught summer courses in Hebrew Grammar at the Jewish Theological Seminary just a few years after he was convicted in court.
Roth’s online resume at Radaris states:
Position: Instructor of intensive ulpan in hebrew grammar Jun 2000 to 2004
Company: Jewish theological seminary of america – New York, NYThese revelations about Roth’s prior employment, first noted by blogger FailedMessiah and subsequently confirmed by Tablet, suggest that Roth’s past conduct was either not investigated or overlooked by two of America’s preeminent Jewish educational institutions. Notably, Roth’s father, Rabbi Joel Roth, is a professor of Talmud and Jewish Law at JTS who previously stepped down as dean of its rabbinical school after allegedly making a sexually explicit statement to a student.
