Rabbi Gafni's uncertain past?

Here are some interesting, yet potentially disturbing articles and resources on Rabbi Marc Gafni. I have to state that this is another person’s talks and writing,Soul Prints, I have enjoyed over the past year or so. The allegations here are very serious if true (yes a big if) and I thought it important to share these with those that are interested in Gafni’s current work but may not be familiar with his controversial past.

Resources:

The Re-Invented Rabbi By Gary Rosenblatt - Editor and Publisher The Jewish Week - September 24, 2004 (Including many ‘Letters to the Editor’ below)

Luke Ford’s Profile of Mordecai Gafni

On Trail of Mordecai Gafnis Lies

In Defense of Rabbi Mordecai Gafni

Now to be fair I did some prelim research and there seems to be some controversy with The Awareness Center (TAC) organization itself which maintains the Case of Rabbi Mordechai Gafni page so who knows what to believe in Gafni’s case. A list of issues with the TAC that was sent to a former board member by two rabbis that includes:

Luke Ford published this note, from Rabbis Saul J. Berman and Joseph Telushkin to Rabbi Blau, which may explain his urgent departure from the AC. The letter, dated September 13, 2004, has this to say about the gang at the Awareness Center:
1. The claim that the site will only report previously published accusations is an outright lie. Vicki has herself sent anonymous slanderous postings to web blogs and then cited them on The Awareness Center site as the basis for serious accusations.
2. The Awareness Center posts and distributes material which is totally false, describing as fact occurrences which simply never took place. The clear intent is the character assassination of those whom Vicki has decided are deserving of public defamation.
3. The site does not remove accusatory material even after full and multiple investigations have concluded that they are false.
4. The Awareness Center has initiated campaigns to destroy the reputation and work prospects of accused persons, even after their names have been formally cleared and/or full resolution between the parties has been achieved.
5. The site will provide no opportunity for response by accused persons, other than an admission of guilt.
6. The attempt to destroy people's reputations long after their death is not the pursuit of justice, it is journalistic pornography.

So it sounds like a potentially troubling situation all around and hard to make heads or tails of from all the conflicting perspectives on Gafni. Suffice it to say it is worth, in my opinion, keeping on the radar. I know we all have made mistakes in the past and probably have many more to come in the future. That being said, I’m merely trying to share what I come across in my effort to become better informed about various aspects and backgrounds of the folks whose work I have read and have developed some respect for over the past few years

Comments

[Batya]

Subj: Answers to your Questions
Date: Wednesday, June 16, 2004
From: VICKIPOLIN
To: SaulBerman@
cc: Executive Board

The Awareness Center
P.O. Box 65273
Baltimore, MD 21209
(443) 857-5560

June 16, 2004

Dear Rabbi Berman,

Thank you for taking the time to write regarding the concerns about The Awareness Center. I also want to apologize for taking so long to get back to you. Please understand that we at The Awareness Center receive enormous numbers of emails and phone calls on a daily basis, which causes us to function as a crisis hot-line.

I know you originally wrote your letter to me (Vicki), but the Executive Board of Directors decided to respond together, as an organization.

We have no way of knowing whether our reply will put all of your concerns to rest--only you would know that. However, we hope that you read the information below with an open mind, not only to the rights of the accused, but also to that of the many victims repeatedly silenced in the past.

1. Process. Do you yourself make the determinations to include individual cases within the listings of accused abusers? Are the members of your Advisory Council consulted in each case and does there have to be a vote or arrival at consensus in order to warrant inclusion?

At this time Vicki Polin is the webmaster of our site. The Awareness Center has a few volunteers who post articles and other information to our daily email newsletters. Vicki Polin, as the Executive Director and President of The Awareness Center, is aware of and approves all the cases that are posted. Our policy is to post all cases of alleged and convicted offenders, whose allegations/convictions have been published elsewhere in legal and/or court documentation, police reports, newspapers, etc. We might also allow other information to be posted as long as at least one other Board of Directors member approves.

The Awareness Center also has an Advisory Board whose members offer us a wide range of advice on various issues that pertain to sexual victimization/violence/offenders in Jewish communities around the globe.

Please be aware that The Awareness Center is purely a volunteer run organization. Our Executive Director, Board of Directors, Advisory Board and other volunteers devote hundreds if not thousands of hours of their personal time, without any compensation.

Once The Awareness Center has funding, and we are able to pay our Executive Director and hire other necessary staff there will be, if needed, changes in the way we operate.

2. Age of the charge. Do you operate with any equivalent of a statute of limitations? For example, the charges against Rabbi Shlomo Aviner were already 15 years old and you document no prior or subsequent charges against him. What is the purpose then of listing him? It sounds like the purpose is to disgrace him for his alleged behavior rather than to protect the community from future threat.

The Awareness Center is not a litigation organization. We are a resource/referral organization that operates as a clearinghouse for information already posted elsewhere. Almost all the information on our web page is information that has been published elsewhere. Exceptions being articles written by members of our Board of Directors, Advisory Board, or other individuals whom we respect. Our web page acts as a specialized library on the topic of sexual violence/victimization.

Did you know that in some countries there is no statue of limitation on cases of sexual violence? Once such country is Canada. When someone is sexually violated it is as if someone has murdered his or her soul. This is one of the many reasons why we do not put time restraints on articles.

It has been well documented in the general public and also in Jewish communities that many offenders will victimize in one community and then move on to another. The status quo has been that different communities do not share vital information, with the end result being that children and/or adults continue to be sexually violated. As we know there has been a code of silence, in society at large but very much so in the Jewish Community--not to tell. Because of such codes of silence, offenders who abused 30 or even 40 years ago often continue to offend today.

The Awareness Center gets emails on a daily basis from NEW survivors of offenders listed on the site, often about offenses that happened many years ago, and were kept silent because the victim was certain that he or she were the only ones. If we cap the length of time an offense can be listed, we are in effect claiming that after a time, a survivor is no longer entitiled to recognition. We also in effect silence potential future victims who might otherwise not know that they are not the only ones an offender has harmed, and would therefore be likely to speak up.

The Awareness Center's mission is not to cause humiliation to anyone, not even to abusers--we are niether judge nor jury, nor do we claim to stand in place of higher authorities of justice. We do, however, believe that a victim's right to validation comes BEFORE an offender's right for privacy. It is always painful to come across yet another Jewish person who was offended. It saddens us even more when we find so many offenders who had charges against them dropped or dismissed as incomplete evidence following witness tampering, intimidation, and using the force of authority figures to silence the victims.

At the same time, if you or anyone else wants to provide us with documentations that prove that Rabbi Aviner (or any other of the alleged or convicted offenders on the site) took steps to not only take responsibility for wrongdoings, asked forgiveness of victims, had entered and completed treatment with a psychotherapist who has recognized experience with treating sexual offenders and who is willing to give a written letter that they are no longer posing a risk to others--we would not only be thrilled for the steps to healing taken by members of our community, but will seriously consider taking the case off the site, or moving it to a link for offenders who made "teshuva" (not only between them and G-d but also between Adam-Lechavero) and can be models to others who erred.

3. Evidence for the charge. When an allegation includes no substantiation whatsoever, and in consequence, public prosecutors dismiss the charges, why should the allegation be honored by inclusion? Such is the situation, for example of the charges against Rabbi Yonah Metzger. Should not the site at minimum provide the accused with an opportunity to respond to the charges?

Some of the comments above should address the above concern. To repeat the important points--sadly, there were many cases where the police dropped the investigation or the case was dismissed following witness tampering, threatening, shaming, and other methods of silencing the victims. If you are familiar with some of the more public cases, you must know that unfortunatelly such manipulations in handling of complaints were not rare. Victims and their families were routinely told by rabbinical courts, rabbis of their community, or people close to the accused rabbi, that if they did not drop their charges/stop talking about it and so forth, they will be excommunicated, their children will not find a shiduch, no yeshiva would accept their children, etc... Families of victims had to recant or stop cooperating with the police because otherwise they were accused of "mesira", "lashon-hara", and ruining the name of a rabbi. Many were told flat out that they should keep quiet because the rabbi's reputation was more important than anything that he might have done to them!

Because of the long history of meddling and muddying the water of victims' complaints, The Awareness Center is forced to make difficult decisions. Please note that we do not post personal communications of people who claim that this or that person had harmed them, only information that was already published/written elsewhere, and only from reputable sources/publications.

As for the offender's right to respond--of course that they have the same right to respond as any one else! We would welcome responses from offenders who can open our eyes to formal documentation that we overlooked and which they believe should be on the site. Though we cannot promise to post them, we will give such documentation serious and expedited consideration for posting.

Even more--for those offenders want to use The Awareness Center's forum as a place for public apology and regonition of the severity of their actions, via personal emails/mail and/or documents that hold such apologies from a previous time, we would take these under expedited consideration as well.

4. Halachic criteria. Does the site operate by any Halachic criteria for the permissibility of publicizing unlitigated and unwitnessed accusations? If yes, who is the Halachik decisor on such matters? Certainly the Chofetz Chaim requires not only first hand knowledge to justify reporting truthful but defamatory reports, but it also requires that Tochacha be issued. I assume that means that the accused must be provided with an opportunity to either deny wrongdoing, or to do teshuva. Does the center provide the opportunity, when feasible, for such direct engagement with alleged abusers?

Please be advised that Rabbi Yosef Blau is on our Board of Directors and we consult with him almost daily. We also have five other rabbis on our Advisory Board. Please feel free to consult with Rabbi Blau if you have any more Halachic concerns.

Even more so, if you'd look at the list of Rabbis who are supportive of The Awareness Center (Rabbis who Publicly Support the Efforts of The Awareness Center), you'll see many rabbis outside of the immediate circle of The Awareness Center's boards, who are supportive of our mission and our policies. In addition, rabbis in Israel and in the US have made Psakim specifically in cases of sexual abuse. They make it clear that in case of a sex-offender, because of the danger to others in the community (let alone the mountains of studies on sexual offenders which depict repeated offenses in most cases if not stopped) Lashon Hara DOES NOT apply, because the life of the community comes first. In another psak that calls for a Kal-Vachomer (all the more so), a rabbi in Israel ruled that when a parent (or other person in authority) commites a sexual offense, especially if it is against a child or a vulnerable person under their care/teaching, and even more so if it's been a repeated offense, they give up their right as a parent (teacher). So much so that in cases of incest, the child, even if adult, is DISMISSED from Kibud-Av v'Em, and is only bound to sit Shiva, but not to cloth and feed and house and other aspects that are bound by Jewish law.

That said, of course there is place for Teshuva. If a person does Teshuva for sins against another person, a plea for forgiveness from G-d is not sufficient--they must first mend the fences with the person/s they hurt and get forgiveness (or at least make serious attempts at that) bedore they even approach G-d's forgiveness.

We can see an example for the hirarchy of Teshuva in Neviim, when Ishaia scolds Israel for doing wrongs among themselves and yet seeking salvation through coming up to the Temple to sacrifice come holidays: (Ishaia Alef, 11-18)--"Lama Li Rov Zivcheichem...gam ki tarbu tefila eineny shomea, yedechem damim maleu.....Limdu heitev, dirshu mishpat, ashru chamotz, shiftu yatom, rivu almana." It is only through working through the harms done by person to person that we can approach G-d for forgiveness--as a nation, not only as individuals.

It would be interesting to know how the Chofetz Chaim would have ruled regarding the issues of sexual abuse in this day and age--at the time such issues were Taboo, and were not discussed. Nor was it known that sexual offenders are likely to continue to offend. Maybe the Chofetz Chaim would have made an exception in cases where the safety of the rest of the community was at stake.

With respect to Tochecha: this is sadly yet another issue where history has not proven itself. When rabbis were repreimanded in the past for offenses (which were, by the way, immediately and effectively silenced), they often harmed again, in the same community or in other communities that were not told of their danger, all because of fear of Lashon-Hara. The Tocheca didn't help, and more victims got hurt. When we come against sexual offenses, especially those committed against minors--research, statistics, and reality show that reprimand is not an effective tool against recidivism. Informing the public, however, is effective as it often brings into the light additional victims, allows procesuction, and ENFORCES TREATMENT on offenders who would otherwise just continue to offend. For those who find Tochecha to be enough, maybe they could take this opportunity to ask for survivors' forgiveness, seek treatment, and publicly let people know that they are aware and dealing with the danger they pose to others, and are taking steps to stop it. Pushing things under the table in hushed meetings among the rabbis of a rabbinical courts has NOT proven itself effective. Maybe one day, when rabbis will recieve training in sexual abuse prevention, identificaion, and treatment, there will be room to approach offenders within a more private forum. To date, as a community, we do not yet have the tools to do so.

5. Range of wrongs. The Center identifies itself as being the "Jewish Coalition Against Sexual Abuse/Assault." If that is the limit of its mandate, and that is already extraordinarily broad, why does the site venture into matters of "cultic" practices which involve no direct allegations of sexual wrongdoing? For example the newspaper articles concerning Rabbi Mordecai Gafni charge him with unspecified "cultic" practices, but make no suggestions of sexual wrongdoing. Is this simply an evasive attempt to "get" Gafni for long circulating, but never publicly confirmed, allegations of impropriety dating from over twenty years ago?

Your concerns abour 'cultic' practices are understood. Maybe the relationship between cultic practices and sexual abuse would be less ambigous to you if you found time to read about the connection between cults and sexual victimization. Unfortunately, cults and cult-like communities often involve abuse of power (including sexual abuse/assault/exploitation) as well as secercy and intimidation via power figures. In almost all cases of cults or cult-like accusations, victims were hushed of devalued in order to maintain the integrity of the group. However, once things became known, there was no longer doubt that allegations were true and in most cases only the tip of the iceberg.

6. Unlistings. What criteria are utilized for removing people from the listing? For example, there was a time when Rabbi Tzvi Flaum was listed on the site. What process was put into motion that eventually resulted in his removal from the list, and what determines when that process is set in motion?

Rabbi Tzvi Flaum is still listed on our site, though in a different location. You can find his case here: Domestic Violence in Jewish Homes

As mentioned above in several places, there is a process for removal form the list (Policies Addressing Victimization and Offenders), (When Melodies, Torah Scholars, and Abuse Collide)

If an offender publicly apologizes for the offenses, takes responsibiliy for the pain they caused, undergoes therapy with a therapist who is recognized as an expert in the area of sexual offenders and completes the therapy with an official letter from the therapist confirmoing that they are no longer in danger to offend, and is willing to comply with whatever treatment (psycotherapy, medication, combination thereof) needed to make sure they do not offend again, then their request to be removed from the offenders site can be seiously considered.

As I indicated at the outset, we truly value the work you are doing and would like to be able to do our part in helping rid the Jewish community of leaders who exploit the vulnerabilities of others in the interest of their own sexual gratification. We feel, however, that our concerns about the above issues of process and substantive criteria must be responded to, in theory and practice, before we can use our website to promote the visibility of the Center.

We hope that the above information helps clarify our policies and underlying reasoning. It is painful to know that such unspeakable events can happen in our community. However, it is important that we allow voice to those who'd been harmed, and stop the processes of silencing those victims who already spoke up so that they can heal and others not be harmed. By not allowing the reality of sexual victimization to be known as soon as we become aware of it, we in effect become willing participates in scerecy and silent endorsement.

We at The Awareness Center would very much welcome the support of Edah for our work, which is a work of heart, tirelessly done with no monetary compensation as of date, and in spite of countless trials and tribulations. You circulation would increase awareness to atrocities within our community and help us all reach for solutions that will stand the test of time.

We hope that you find a way to bridge the conceptual gaps that sexual victimization forces us all to make--it is against everything Jewish when people of power harm those more vulnerable. It is not an easy or comfortable reality to hold, and we all wish it could just go away. For those who have been victimized, and for those who would if we don't allow victimes to speak up or step forward--we must go on.

Sincerely,
Executive Board of Directors - The Awareness Center

[Secoya]

Rabbi Mordecai Gafni's Teachings to a Teenage Girl

By Secoya (The anonymous girl in Gary Rosenblatt's article)

Your Moral Leader - October 13, 2004

http://yourmoralleaderblogspot.com/2004/10/rabbi-mordecai-gafnis-teachings-to.html

I was thirteen, entering 9th grade at a yeshiva high school in NY. Mordechai Winiarz (now known as Marc Gafni) appeared at my parent's shabbat table, I think in early September. He was a Rabbinical student at YU. He offered to tutor me in Talmud, a new subject for girls in 9th grade in my school. He invited me over to Lincoln Square Synagogue, where he offered to help me out with learning Buba Metziah, if I would meet him on Shabbat afternoon in one of their class rooms.

After our first lesson, he walked me home, and proceeded to tell me how "special" I was, and that he really liked me. I got a weird feeling about this, but being completely inexperienced with adult men, I didn't have a clue about how to respond to this. I was a very sheltered religious girl. I wore long skirts and long sleeves, had told boys in 8th grade that I would not touch them as I believed in "negiah". I had no experience with boys, or men, for that matter, except for a few wonderful teachers I had in school.

Also, there was a lot going on for me and my family at the time. My mom was just getting over breast cancer, having gone through a year of chemotherapy. She was very sick and we were all frightened. My rather large family was in crisis due to this, and I would say that due to this trauma, not a lot of attention or attentiveness was being sent my way. Considering the circumstances, my family was doing the best they could. Mordechai asked if I would like to "learn" with him, and I said OK.

Over the next month, he continued to tell me how much he liked me and how "special" I was, but told me that I must not tell any one that he felt this way. He told me that if my parents knew about it, they would blame me for associating with him, and that I would be shamed in my community. He told me that we had to keep it a secret, because most people just wouldn't understand. As far as I understood at that point, we had a friendship, and I was getting some extra attention from an adult at a time when there wasn't a lot adult attention to go around in my family. My Dad was overworked, and my mom was recovering from cancer. I didn't quiet understand why I should be silent about the things Mordechai told me. He hadn't touched me yet, but was doing a fine job of "grooming me" into being silent and fearful. He convinced me that I had to be loyal to him, and "not tell" about how he felt about me. I believed everything he told me. In retrospect, he calculatedly brainwashed me into silence, hooked me into an emotional trap, ensuring that I wouldn't tell my parents.

Then he asked my parents if he could stay at our house over shabbat, because he wanted to be able to walk to a synagogue in our part of the city. They said OK. (My parents had no idea that they should suspect him of anything. After all, he was a religious guy from YU.) It was then that he started coming into my room after I had fallen asleep, and waking me up. I remember clearly that when he tried to touch me, I pushed him away repeatedly. I remember saying, "no, no, no!" I knew intuitively that it just wasn't OK with me. But he was larger and stronger than me, and after a huge struggle, he overcame me. Week after week, he would come into my bedroom and woke me up in the middle of the night, and I would fight to keep him from touching me. Every time, I was overcome by him physically. He had already done the job of convincing me that if I told one I would be shamed by my family and my community, so I kept silent about what was going on. I hated it, was disgusted by it, and I was terrified, but there was no place I could talk about it or get help. I also had no words for what was happening to me, it was horrible and indescribable. I think of myself back then as a 13 year old girl who had to become disconnected from the world around her, it was full of contradiction and betrayal, and I had been trapped in this horrible situation with, as far as I could see, no way out. I walked around my neighborhood, a place that had always been familiar and safe for me, and I no longer felt connected to anything.

I remember on one of the nights that he came into my room, woke me up and was trying to molest me, he told me that he and his brother were abused by their mother, who was a holocaust survivor. He told me that she stuck their heads in the kitchen oven. There was a very clear message that because of what had happened to him, he couldn't help but doing what he was doing to me, and he pleaded with me to understand that, have compassion with him, and comply. More than once, he told me what he was doing was because of the way I looked, or because he just couldn't control himself. He described the world to me as he saw it, full of boys and men who just could not control their sexual impulses, and like them, he really couldn't help himself- he just had to do what he was doing to me. He just had no choice. He added, as part of his rationalization, that the guys at YU were always masturbating, but no one talked about it.

But he was tormented by the fact that he had no control over himself. Each morning after the molestation experience, I would wake up and walk into the living room, and see him shuckling wildly, beating his chest, doing "teshuva" for what he had done the night before. He told me that I should join him in doing teshuva too! Amazingly, he really believed that I was a partner in sin. Of course, I didn't "daven" or do "teshuva", but just stared at him in disbelief. And even after this fervent bout of repentance, he would wake me up in the middle of the night the next week.

I also remember him practicing sermons in front of me. He would pace around, gesticulating and dramatizing this or that phrase from the Torah. He wanted to be just like Rabbi Riskin, and he did a great job emulating Riskin's body language and speech patterns. He talked a lot about gaining popularity and getting to be a powerful leader. Mordechai made it clear that he wanted to be a "big Rabbi", a "tzaddik". It seemed to me that he just loved to hear himself talk.

The abuse went on through the year I was in 9th grade. The school year was almost over, I remember it was warm out. He called me on the phone one day to tell me that he would no longer be coming over. He realized that what he really needed was to get married soon, and he explained that this would give him a proper outlet for his sexuality. Its hard to describe how I felt at that moment, because it is complex. My molester finally decided to stop abusing me, to leave me alone, to move on. You would imagine I would feel great relief, but actually the full weight of the abuse I had endured in silence came crashing down on me. Here I was, left with this horrible experience, still with no one to talk to about it, and no language for it anyway. And he wasn't retreating because I had some how managed to make him stop, but because he decided it just wasn't worth the risk any more. He was terrified that he would do more and make me pregnant- then there would be no way to keep his secret. Until then, his abuse included exposing my body against my will, forcibly touching my breast, grabbing my hand and forcing me to touch his penis, and forced digital vaginal penetration. All were the most horrifying, degrading and painful experiences for me. All this only a year or so after my bat mitzvah.

After his phone call, I knew that I no longer had to endure his abuse, but now I had to figure out how to survive it, and what I really wanted to do was escape the world that had allowed this to happen to me. I understand that what I was going through is called post-traumatic stress these days. But in those days, and in my community, the words sexual violence, sexual abuse, or molestation, sexual trauma, were just not house-hold concepts. I knew there was no way any one would believe my story, and if anything, what happened would be misunderstood or minimized and dismissed.

After a while, I figured the best thing to do was to "put the experience away" until I could figure out how to deal with it. During the abuse, I had, out of necessity, become pretty good at compartmentalizing myself, and leaving my body when something was happening to it that I hated, but couldn't control. I was also good at "putting away" the things that were just too complex and painful to deal with at the time. This is how I survived the rest of high school.

I tried to escape the trauma I had endured by spending the next school year in Israel, doing my best to push it out of my immediate reality. Upon returning from Israel for the 11th grade, I began to withdraw from the Orthodox world. I made it to college and embraced college life. My twenties were about getting as far away from what had happened to me as possible. I was determined to be free of a world that had betrayed me, and to embrace the world as a secular Jewish college kid. It wasn't until much later that I was really able to deal with the trauma of what had happened.

While in high school, I had told some of my siblings, who were shocked. No one knew what to do with my story. I told a male NCSY counselor, who had no response, except to look very uncomfortable. When I was 18, I told my parents, who were also shocked, and enraged. But no one knew how to deal with he information I was sharing.

It wasn't until about 10 years ago, that I began to speak out more widely about what had happened to me. In 1994, I wrote a letter to Rabbi Riskin, and told him my story. I never received a response from him. I continue to tell the story to any one who wants to know about it. Many people have contacted me over the years. People who had a "creepy" feeling about Mordechai, or who had heard rumors, but wanted to hear a first hand account.

I tell my story for the following reasons:

If there is any way I can protect another girl or woman from going through what I went through, I will do it. If there is any way I can protect a parent from having their child victimized, and having to deal with the pain and guilt of not having known enough to protect their child, I will do it.

Unfortunately, I knew Mordechai very well. He told me a lot about himself, and I knew him as a sexually compulsive, sexually violent man. After talking with counselors, lawyers, and professionals who advise and counsel sexual perpetrators, I learned that in 99% of cases, people who compulsively sexually abuse girls or women, especially those who were abused themselves as children, don't stop. These are dangerous people. The more we are silent about them, the more they have the freedom to act out their sexual compulsions. Further first hand accounts show that Mordechai continued to molest young women after he was married. Unfortunately, marriage did not solve his problems. There is no reason for me to assume he is not still victimizing girls and women. Back when I knew him, he was a refined manipulator, "groomer", "brain-washer", and he used those skills in order to victimize girls and young women. I have no doubt that, years later, he has honed his skills as a predator.

A couple of years ago, Mordechai asked one of his supporters to contact me, to see if we could meet. I was told that he wanted to make peace with me. I read a letter that he wrote, stating that he regretted that our "relationship" didn't work out, and that he wished he had waited for me to come of age and had married me. He really thought that we had a mutually consenting relationship, and that I was hoping that he would take me as his bride! There was no acknowledgment that he did anything against my will, and certainly no recognition of the gravity of his actions. He was trying to contact me because he knew I was telling my story, and he wanted to stop the bad PR, not because he wanted to make amends, do "teshuva", or own up in any way to what he did. His statements to Gary Rosenblatt, "I never forced her...she was 14 going on 35" are the farthest from the truth. Anyway, I expected that he would be smarter than to make these transparently self incriminating statements. Like your classic pedophile, he claimed that the child was consenting, loved him back, and really liked what was going on. There is no reason for me to believe that Gafni has reformed his ways. There is every reason for me to speak out and protect others from him.

Of all people, Mordechai should not be teaching people about Judaism - any "variety of Judaism" - Orthodox or Jewish Renewal, or any other Jewish trend. Yes, he is smart, charismatic, knows how to excite people, bring people in. Are we that desperate for someone to attract wayward Jews to Judaism, that we condone a sexual predator doing it?

Should Judaism be taught to spiritual seekers by someone who has molested minors and attacked young women? If we want a formula for misrepresentation...and turning people off to Judaism for good - we've got one.

[anon]

"Gafni, nee Marc Winiarz, who reportedly fled the United States for Israel to avoid either prosecution for previous charges of sexual assault or the social repercussions of such allegations, has been oustered from his position at Bayit Chadash, the spiritual community in Tel Aviv-Yaffo, amidst five distinct allegations of sexual harrassment and one charge of rape."

http://jewschool.com/?p=10573