Rabbis’ arrests raise ethics focus
RELIGIONOrthodox Jewish leaders urge High Holiday emphasis on standards

By Jeff Diamant Comments 0
Published: September 26, 2009

In an unusual move, a group of influential Orthodox Jewish leaders wrote a letter urging American rabbis to speak during this year’s High Holidays on the importance of ethical living, in response to some recent high-profile arrests of Jews, including two New Jersey rabbis in July.

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Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, begins at sundown Sunday. Most Jews consider this day the holiest in the Jewish calendar. On Yom Kippur, the Book of Life is closed and sealed. Those that have repented for their sins are granted a good and happy new year. It is a day to ask forgiveness for promises broken to God. There is no blowing of the shofar, a ram’s horn, on Yom Kippur, and observant Jews fast.

In the Sept. 3 letter sent to about 2,000 rabbis nationwide, the leaders of Yeshiva University, the Orthodox Union and the Rabbinical Council of America cited "the recent scenes of religious Jews being led off in handcuffs, charged with corruption, money laundering, and even organ trafficking.”

During the High Holidays, which began Sept. 18 with Rosh Hashana and end Monday on Yom Kippur, Jews are supposed to take stock of their lives, and rabbis’ sermons these days can touch on everything from personal religious observance to social issues, and from personal morality to international relations.

The letter, which several Orthodox rabbis in New Jersey said they would heed, urged Jewish clergy to publicly affirm at least once during the High Holidays that the Torah forbids all stealing; that secular laws bind religious Jews; that Jews should lead efforts to promote honesty in society; and that Jews must sacrifice financially rather than bring shame to God or Jewish law.

"This is not a time for splitting hairs over possible dissenting views,” reads the letter, signed by six leading Orthodox rabbis. "(W)e must make the ethical demands of the Torah and the day clear in the most public of ways. We strongly urge you to join with us and loudly declare, to our own communities and to the world, that we, representing Torah, will not tolerate any but the highest standards of ethics.”

The letter referred indirectly to money-laundering charges against Rabbi Ben Haim of Congregation of Ohel Yaacob and Rabbi Edmund Nahum of the Synagogue of Deal, N.J., and Rabbi Saul Kassin from Brooklyn, and organ-trafficking charges against a Jew from Brooklyn. Those arrests were part of a massive sting operation that also led to the arrest of politicians on corruption charges. The letter seemed to hint at crimes of Bernie Madoff, whose fraudulent investment company cost thousands of people billions of dollars.

In Oklahoma City, Orthodox rabbi Ovadia Goldman said he did not receive the letter. Goldman is rabbi at Chabad Jewish Center, 3000 W Hefner.

Goldman said Yom Kippur already is the focus of such issues as ethics, aside from any letter which appears to indirectly call attention to alleged criminal behavior by others. "What else would we be focusing on?” Goldman said.

"In general, the best way to dispel darkness, to deal with challenges, is to increase in goodness and light and moral deeds.”

Goldman said on Yom Kippur, Jews around the world will spend up to 24 hours in the presence of God, "recognizing the good done in the past and thinking about ways to build on that and increase it in the future.”

He said the day is best spent focusing on the positive. "A little bit of light can do good,” he said.

Meanwhile, among the New Jersey rabbis who planned to address these issues during the holidays were Rabbi Shmuel Goldin of Ahavath Torah in Englewood, N.J., the first vice president of the Rabbinical Council of America, an organization of Orthodox rabbis.

"There are times you have to say things that really should be apparent in and of themselves, and that the ethical dimension of our religion and the ethical requirements of our religion are extremely high and should not be ignored,” Goldin said.

Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist rabbis did not receive the letter, and from interviews it seems unlikely they would sermonize on the issue as much as Orthodox rabbis.

However, several non-Orthodox rabbis in the New Jersey area said they spoke about the issue in weeks following the July arrests and that they might touch on it during the High Holidays. They said they were glad the Orthodox rabbis wrote the letter.

Rabbi Steven Kushner of Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield, N.J., a Reform congregation, said he would briefly refer to the men arrested in a sermon about another subject: the fleeting nature of possessions.

"The point of the sermons,” Kushner said, "is the minute you realize you don’t own anything and that the stuff you have is entrusted to you to take care of, and to share with others, then ultimately you wouldn’t fall into the same place that Madoff and those rabbis in Deal did.”

Contributing: Religion Editor Carla Hinton