Rabbi Saul Berman Has Yet To Apologize For His Lies - Levi Ford

Rabbi Saul Berman / Rabbi Mordechai Gafni / Rabbi Avi Weiss

Steven I. Weiss blogs:

I've frequently said that, just like stockbrokers who violate SEC regulations, abusive rabbis should not be allowed to return to positions of public trust.

Berman's obviously not an abusive rabbi, but he is an aggressive enabler of one, and someone who, quite meretriciously, openly attacked those who sought to do right. If he'd provided a complete apology at anything like the level of his original attacks, and if he'd shown that he knows where he went wrong and how he could avoid it in the future, we'd be having a different discussion. But, several months after the latest Gafni discussion, he still hasn't.

Today's world is perhaps the easiest in which to offer a mea culpa. He could start a blog, write to a blog, publish in the New York Jewish Week, or put something on Chovevei's Website, all without leaving his desk. He's done no such thing.

It'll really be a shame if the immediate reward to conduct like his is to simply resume one's celebrated status as a leader in the liberal Modern Orthodox community. But that seems to be precisely what's going on.


Jewish Whistleblower comments:

Berman wrote the most reprehensible letters deadening the names of brave women (and their supporters) who came forward to protect Jewish women and children from Gafni. Berman wrote that he fully investigated the allegations and found them false. In fact that was a lie. He refused to even hear from several of Gafni’s survivors. Berman produced and signed letters for Gafni, letters Gafni publicized and took around with him in a briefcase and that allowed him to destroy people’s names and reputations and put women and children in direct danger. Berman has never taken any real steps to take real responsibility, to fully correct the record or do real teshuvah to Gafni’s brave survivors or their supporters. No letters. No attempt to appologize. That is not teshuvah. I would note that Rabbi Avi Weiss was a supporter of Gafni who lent his name to Gafni’s organization. Apparently, his activism ends at actually doing something for survivors of his colleagues.