On June 28, 2010, the Knesset passed amendments to the Law for Prevention of Sexual Harassment by Figures of Authority. The amendment, to include spiritual and religious leaders as legally constituted figures of authority, was initiated by Kolech. This legal victory by Kolech had great significance to me personally, as a clinical psychologist and a Kolech activist. The question I grappled with was: Who were the silenced victims on whose behalf we were acting?
How I Came to the Issue
As a psychologist for Bat Ami (a division of Sherut Leumi, responsible for some 3,000 religious national service female volunteers), I encountered my first client, an Ethiopian girl who had been violently raped. She faced me, unable to speak, tears silently streaking her face. I remember another woman, a pretty, smart, inspiring mother of young girls who had been admitted to the hospital following a suicide attempt. My question as to whether she had been sexually abused in the past unleashed a painful story of rape by her father since she was five years old. When her own daughters neared this age, she broke down. Three times a week I sat with her, listening to her loud sobs and trying to reconstruct the silenced memories. About two years after my leaving the hospital, I found out that she had jumped to her death.
I first encountered sexual abuse perpetrated by a religious leader in the case of Yitzchak Cohen in 2002 (discussed later). I had received accusations against him from two victims, who subsequently refused to say another word about the incidents. Several months later I heard that Cohen was to be appointed head of the board of directors of Bat Ami, where I was working at the time. I was shocked to think that he would be in charge of an organization responsible for 3,000 girls ages 18 to 20, and I understood that I must take action. I approached a member of the board of Bat Ami and told him what I knew, insisting that it was inconceivable that Cohen should get the job. “I will check it out and let you know,” he said. When two weeks went by with no news, I asked what he had found. “Our people at Bar-Ilan checked and found that nothing happened,” he said. Knowing the inquiry had been swept under the carpet, I replied, “I want you to know that if he is appointed chairman of Bat Ami, I will contact the media.” The next day he summoned me and told me that Cohen would not get the job, but not for the reasons I had suggested.
At the same time, the Ze’ev Kopolovich affair was being publicized in the media. Rabbis and educators (Rabbi Mordechai Elon included) hurried to testify as to Kopolovich’s good character. Reading about this in the newspaper, I was unable to sleep. I wrote an opinion piece for the now-defunct Hatzofeh newspaper expressing the pain I felt: Who was caring for the victims? I asked. My words were published on the inner pages of a weekday paper.
Two weeks later, I gave birth to a son. In the maternity ward I met Hannah Kehat, founder of Kolech, holding her own son. “I read your article,” she said. “We have to talk and decide what to do.” I demurred: “Hannah, let’s give ourselves time to raise the babies; when they’re older, we’ll talk.”
Kolech has become a trailblazer, bringing the subject to public attention.
Hannah asked me to speak at the second Kolech Conference about our work at Bat Ami in treating sexually abused girls. I described the processes typical of the abusive relationship: silencing, blaming, aggression, dehumanization of the victim, splitting, and confidence crises. These processes are replicated on a wider societal scale as well, including splitting factions into good and bad, sowing distrust between factions, persecutory delusions, and convergence of the powerful around the abuser.
Kolech’s Actions on Sexual Abuse
Several months later I was dismissed from my job at Bat Ami, which claimed that the termination was due to a reorganization. I approached Kolech with a proposal for a program to provide information and to prevent sexual abuse.
When the Shlomo Aviner affair (which involved emotional abuse and sexual harassment) became public knowledge, Aliza Lavie placed the topic on Kolech’s agenda. We met with support organizations and legal specialists. These meetings resulted in a decision to focus on two courses of action: helping victims and engaging in educational and preventive activities. Kolech submitted formal accusations against Cohen to Bar-Ilan University, where a committee was established, headed by Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, and the accusations voiced were substantiated. This became the model for the forum’s work. What was remarkable was that this was the first time that accusations of sexual harassment by a rabbi were subject to an organized inquiry, which provided exposure of such incidents.
Since then, Kolech has become a trailblazer, bringing the subject to public attention. We have spoken about it repeatedly at conferences in Israel and the United States, written, lectured, and given interviews on the subject. Following the Cohen and Aviner affairs, the related community realized that it was necessary to continue our exposure of abuse, as there was little likelihood that victims of authority figures would approach the police or seek justice against their abusers.
The Takana Forum
About eight years ago, Rebbetzins Chana Henkin and Gila Rosen launched a forum on the subject of sexual harassment and abuse, enlisting a number of organizations and rabbis. Emunah was in the initial stages of establishing a forum of its own, and the rebbetzins made an effort to connect Kolech with Emunah. Rebbetzin Yehudit Shilat also enlisted rabbis in the forum, which became known as the Takana Forum.
For two years the forum worked to formulate a code of ethics for dealing with sexual abuse perpetrated by figures of authority. The code was conceived and written by Riki Shapira, the legal adviser of Kolech. The forum’s deliberations led to the establishment of procedural methods to ensure proper and efficient treatment of accusations of sexual abuse and harassment, from both a moral and public perspective. After two years, the forum began to take on specific cases of abuse.
Kolech’s presence in the Takana Forum was not a given. Throughout its existence, several members have been ambivalent about our participation. For some of the rabbis in the forum, we were outliers in the group. Conversely, we felt that being part of such a broadbased forum required us to accept therapeutic norms incompatible with our own. We tried to be cautious, to voice our opinions and accommodate our views within the forum.
Over the past few months, this ambivalence became even more conspicuous. Wishing to maintain a broad coalition, the forum could not accept us as authentic partners. I first learned of the Elon affair only two hours before it appeared on the news, from reporters who asked for my comments. Eventually the leadership of Kolech decided to withdraw from the Takana Forum and resume independent action on this important issue.
Why So Many Sexual Abuse Cases?
The public exposure of the Elon affair led to the discovery of several other past scandals. Indeed, so many affairs are now emerging that we must ask ourselves: How is this possible?
Prof. Mary Gail Frawley, in her book Perversion of Power: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church, on sexual abuse by religious leaders, distinguishes between two types of rabbis: those who see themselves as messengers of God, entitled to honor and veneration by virtue of their high status, and those who see themselves primarily as community service providers, spiritual leaders who model themselves on the image of Moses, the humblest of men. The former perceive of themselves as an elite and constantly strive for greater adoration. Disciples worship their rabbi, develop idealizing transference, and see the rabbi as a personification of God, flawless and exulted.
This idealization is a ticking bomb; the rabbi must be aware of it and neutralize it.
In the absence of a systematic educational program to develop the rabbi’s consciousness of these processes and to facilitate coping with them, this idealization assumes a potentially dangerous form. The rabbi soaks up the adoration transferred to him, responds to it, and begins to feel superior, intoxicated by the power ascribed by his minions. From here, it is a short way to abuse, exploitation, and disregard of all authority and limits.
The Development of Spiritual Leadership
Notwithstanding the current criticism of the rabbinate, we must exercise caution in our critique. One of the most hurtful and dangerous responses is to say that “all religious people, all rabbis, are hypocrites.” It would be wrong to obliterate and crush all religious authority. The world of the rabbinate includes the spiritual treasures of the Jewish people, traditions maintained and handed down for thousands of years. We must hesitate to denigrate this tradition, and we must continue looking for ways of making them accessible to all who are interested, including people of all genders, affiliations, and ethnic groups. We are now in the midst of this process, as attested to by the revolutionary emergence of secular batei midrash. In the next few years we must further the process: The rabbinate must gradually come to include women as well. This process presents risks and opportunities, concerns and hopes, as does any change, and it would be premature to predict its conclusion.
From a wider perspective, though, the issue is the development of spiritual leadership. To prevent sexual abuse by religious authorities, we must undergo a cultural shift in how religious authority is perceived. We can no longer continue to view religious leaders as semi-gods. Rather we must recognize spiritual leaders as human and vulnerable, aware of their powers and strengths, but also of their weaknesses, and taking responsibility for them. As individuals and as a society, we are charged with directing this transformation, hearing the victims, and acting out of a sense of responsibility toward them— helping the past and current victims and preventing future ones.