This effort won’t make much of a difference. Jewish leadership has historically been based on wealth and scholarship. Selecting leadership primarily for “goodness” is probably not evolutionarily advantageous.
Jewish historical patterns aren’t going to change on a dime.
Also, consider the many competing obligations of a Jewish leader. He has obligations to Jews, to his funders, to his sect, and to his peers. A rabbi who’s a great fundraiser but has some ethical problems is not usually going to lose his leadership position. Sexual problems did not remove King David and many other Jewish leaders over the years. Jews are more tolerant of these ethical foibles than white Protestants.
In my experience, the most charismatic rabbis with the most devoted followings are running some kind of scam. Think about the Museum of Tolerance and the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the ADL and the SPLC. They fundraise by running a scam (scaring old Jews that the Cossacks are coming).
A national effort is underway to restore ethical behavior to a Jewish community that has been tarnished by high-profile scandals — clergy and other leaders engaged in sexual abuse, mikveh voyeurism and more.
“Declaration on Ethics in Jewish Leadership” began circulating among Jewish leaders last month and outlines 10 ethical principles expected of Jewish organizations. The letter has since drawn signatures of more than 350 Jewish leaders, including approximately 30 from Los Angeles.
Local supporters include Rabbi Sharon Brous of IKAR; Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills Senior Rabbi Jonathan Aaron; Leo Baeck Temple Senior Rabbi Ken Chasen; Rabbi Morley Feinstein of University Synagogue; Rabbi Noah Farkas of Valley Beth Shalom; Isa Aron and Rabbi Rachel Adler, professors at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles; and Rabbi Mark Borovitz of Beit T’Shuvah.
Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in Washington, D.C., and a member of the committee that authored the declaration, said in a phone interview that it’s time to ask some tough questions.
“There has been evidence of ethical lapses among Jewish leaders and I think the question to ask is, ‘Are there more ethical failings in our time or are they simply being reported more often thanks to the good work of investigative journalists and thanks to a greater willingness of people to act as whistleblowers?’
“I don’t know the answer to that. The fact these scandals are being exposed is important because sunshine, they say, is the greatest disinfectant. The more these things are exposed, the greater likelihood they will come to be regarded in the community as unacceptable.”
The declaration’s authors’ efforts began this past summer, when New York’s The Jewish Week published a letter by Susanna Heschel, professor of Jewish studies at Dartmouth College, about Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt. He is a New York rabbi who took young, naked boys to a sauna but nonetheless has remained the leader of his synagogue, Riverdale Jewish Center. Its publication prompted Medoff to contact Heschel about doing something about scandalous activity in the community, and they worked on the declaration together.
