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July 20, 2001/Tamuz 29, 5761, Vol. 53, No.41
The OU, a year later, how much has changed?
GARY ROSENBLATT
The Jewish Week
NEW YORK - One year after the publication of allegations that Rabbi Baruch Lanner abused teens in his charge for three decades, much has changed at the Orthodox Union and its National Conference of Synagogue Youth, where the rabbi was a top official.
But has the transformation been enough to restore confidence in the once-proud, century-old organization?
On some levels, the landscape of the OU and the lives of some of its leaders have been profoundly altered. Lanner was forced to resign the day the article appeared in The Jewish Week, and the OU appointed a special commission to look into the charges against him. After six months of investigation, the commission amassed "extensive, compelling evidence" that Lanner "engaged in broad patterns of inappropriate and abusive behavior" over many years with the knowledge of key leaders. Its report called for systemic changes in the management, oversight and culture of the OU.
In addition, the chief executive of the OU stepped down, under pressure, in January, and Lanner was indicted in New Jersey on charges of criminal sexual assault. He is expected to go on trial next year.
Harvey Blitz, who succeeded Dr. Mandell Ganchrow as OU president in December, has been given high marks for his aggressive efforts to restore trust in the OU. In board meetings, and in gripe sessions with congregants of several synagogues considering withdrawal from the OU, Blitz has expressed personal and collective contrition for past mistakes while emphasizing the need to move forward.
"We should have apologized more fully at the outset," Blitz said in a recent interview. "Part of our initial reluctance may have been psychological - we were in denial - and part may have been out of legal concerns. But it was a mistake."
On the other hand, he said it was not healthy for the OU to wallow in past misdeeds, given the organization's proud history and recent mandate to reconstitute itself.
But critics persist, and many say the OU changes, while welcome, were undertaken begrudgingly and are not nearly enough.
The chief complaint, voiced in various ways, is that beneath the surface, the culture of the OU remains - a narrow, male-dominated, defensive and flawed institution unwilling or unable to fully accept responsibility for a climate that allowed Lanner's abuse to continue unchecked for decades.
"I spent six months delving into this, and I'm impatient," said Richard Joel, the president of Hillel who chaired the nine-member commission, which interviewed hundreds of witnesses.
Choosing his words carefully, and emphasizing that "I don't want my comments to undermine the OU, I want it to succeed," Joel explained that the commission's 331-page private report and 54-page public summary were "a call for radical change in the culture of the OU," from governance to inclusiveness, and he has real concerns as to whether the leadership "has taken the report to heart."
Joel expressed disappointment that the OU's lay leadership "looks substantially the same," and that the full private report, which included the names of lay and professional leaders held responsible for Lanner's actions, was not shared with the OU board.
Suzanne Last Stone, a law professor and member of the commission, said she is "deeply dismayed" that the full report was not released to the board.
"You can't expect the culture to change when the board remains unaware of the depth of the problems they need to grapple with," she said.
Indeed, many people in the Orthodox community have expressed cynicism over the fact that no one lay or professional leader of the OU was criticized publicly for the scandal.
Rabbi Raphael Butler, the chief executive who was cited in the report for having knowledge of Lanner's behavior, received only praise from OU officials when he stepped down.
Supporters of Butler, who was popular within the OU leadership during his seven-year tenure as executive vice president, maintain that he was made the scapegoat for the sins of several lay leaders and other professionals, and that he could have dragged others down with him had he so chosen.
Several OU lay leaders closest to Butler have been picked for key positions in the new administration, including chairing the search for his replacement, adding to the sense that as one board member acknowledged, "the old boys network is still in place." The board member said the national organization is essentially run by a handful of men in New York who have long been in power, and that Blitz has "reached out to people who won't challenge him in any way."
One key figure is Allen Faigin, a New York attorney who served on the special commission and, unlike several colleagues who curtailed their OU activities afterward, is now a vice president of the OU and chair of its new committee on structure and governance.
According to one of the top dozen or so senior lay leaders, there is tension within the OU between those who supported the efforts of the special commission and those who thought their report was overly harsh and harmful.
Blitz acknowledged the internal strain but said perceptions that the OU remains largely unchanged are unfair.
He admitted that the OU has suffered financially from the Lanner scandal. Legal expenses involved with the special commission's work were nearly $1 million, and fund raising this year has been down.
In seeking to reassure the community that they have responded positively to the special commission's recommendations, OU and NCSY officials point to the nine-point plan for NCSY that they are implementing. It includes policy guidelines to protect against potential abuse of youngsters, staff training for advisers, formalized evaluations and the appointment of two ombudsmen (male and female) to handle complaints about the conduct of advisers.
Much of the work is the result of the advocacy of lay leaders in the Etz Chaim region of NCSY, the New Jersey area where Lanner was most active and where criticism of the organization has been strongest this past year. These leaders say they have been pushing NCSY to adopt and embrace the extensive policy and behavioral standards they put in place regionally, and they are hopeful this will happen on the national level.
But Joel, the special commission chairman, questioned whether the youth group has undergone any deep evaluation of its educational programs and goals.
This line of questioning goes to the deepest and most sensitive area of the youth group's work, its religious outreach to teens. The organization has taken great pride in and received much praise for its quantitative and qualitative success in inspiring Jewish teens to become more observant. In light of the Lanner scandal, many NCSY supporters assert the specific charges against one rabbi should not take away from the important role the group plays in bolstering Orthodox Judaism.
But there are also signs that criticisms are being addressed. In recent months, several prominent Orthodox rabbis have instructed youth advisers to avoid creating conflict between newly observant teens and their less observant parents.
Others note that the Lanner scandal has had an impact beyond the Orthodox community, alerting youth groups to be proactive and vigilant in dealing with abuse, and reminding Jewish groups that they are open to scrutiny in the press and highly dependent on communal support.
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