Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt: Jewish Paedophile

[Karl Radl]

Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt: Jewish Paedophile

Another week and yet another sex scandal from the world of rabbinical Judaism. This time it is a little different in that it doesn't actually involve sexual intercourse per se, but rather the distinctly paedophilic practices of Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt.

Rosenblatt is the rabbi of the Riverdale Jewish Center, an Orthodox Synagogue in the Bronx, and has, since 1985, been conducting rather unusual jewish education sessions there. Rosenblatt likes to get naked and go with his purely male students into the showers and sauna. (1) Rosenblatt apparently believes that this behaviour has educational benefits in his tutoring the boys in the intricacies of Judaism; instead it has left many of his students distinctly traumatized. (2)

To quote the New York Times:

'But last fall, decades after the first complaints, a man whom Rabbi Rosenblatt once took to the sauna learned that the rabbi had spoken to sixth graders at the school the man’s son attends.

The father posted an email to a Jewish discussion group with about 500 members, who turned out to include at least six veterans of the sauna sessions. Their accounts, along with others that have emerged, paint a disturbing picture. According to the boys involved, who now are grown, the rabbi openly gawked at a naked 12-year-old. He invited a 15-year-old over for intimate nighttime conversations, during which he frequently put his hand on the boy’s leg. He invited himself into a 17-year-old’s living room and tried repeatedly to persuade him to change into a bathrobe.' (3)

Now openly gawking at a 12 year old boy's prepubescent genitalia, offering a 15 year old boy 'intimate night time conversations' and trying to get a 17 year old boy to change into a bathrobe, in my admittedly European male heterosexual world, positively reeks of paedophilia and a desire to have sexual intercourse with young boys.

Whether Rosenblatt has acted on these instincts yet is clearly not the issue; the issue is that he is behaving this way at all and further that the Orthodox community has aided, abetted and even defended this clearly paedophilic conduct! (4)

As the Jewish Daily Forward so aptly puts it; major jewish and rabbinic institutions knew all about Rosenblatt's behaviour, but they did absolutely nothing to stop it. In fact they defended him as a kind of visionary teacher of a sort. (5)

Indeed Rosenblatt is no lightweight in Orthodox Judaism as he married into rabbinic royalty, was considered for the position of Chief Rabbi of Britain a few years ago, is currently a visiting scholar at Harvard and is a frequent speaker at events specifically aimed at children and young people. (6)

The fact that he is quite clearly being protected from being accused of being a paedophile and his behaviour has been subject to private censure (but not public repudiation and nor has it ceased) suggests that the epidemic of child molestation (and a culture of defending it) that, as I have remarked many times, infests ultra-Orthodox Judaism also infects its less stringent cousin; Orthodox Judaism.

Quite frankly anyone who thinks Rabbi Rosenblatt's behaviour is acceptable in any way, shape or form is just sick.

References

(1) http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/ny...tely.html?_r=0
(2) http://forward.com/opinion/309487/do...dox-mentality/
(3) http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/ny...tely.html?_r=0
(4) http://forward.com/opinion/309487/do...dox-mentality/
(5) Ibid.
(6) http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/ny...tely.html?_r=0

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This was originally published at the following address: http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot...tt-jewish.html