Molestation of Power

So I just heard/read about a new skandal. Apparently Rav Motti Elon, a venerated and respected Da'ati-Leumi (religious-nationalist) Israeli Rabbi has been accused by a rabbinical oversight board of "inappropriate sexual conduct" with his students. So what the shit is going on in the Orthodox Community in specific, and the Jewish Community as a whole?

FIrst a disclaimer. I want to state at the outset that I know that child molestation at the hands of Rabbis is of no greater amount than that of the general population. But because this is my family, I hold them to a higher standard. That's just how it goes. It's my blog, deal with it.

I have to count the child molester rabbis that I know on 2 hands now, and I even know several victims as well. And I'm not so involved in the community that I come into contact with that many people, nor am I that close with very many rabbinical leaders. I understand that these are people just like everyone else; I gave up idolizing and deifying rabbis a while back. But I wonder if maybe a certain personality type is drawn to positions of youth leadership. Perhaps people who have a dark-side. That combined with the carte-blanch authority and lack of oversight in the closed Orthodox world allows for such dark urges to grow into terrible acts. So what can we do about it? How suspicious should we be? Is this a cause for loss-of-faith?

I am friends with a guy who was victimized by Rabbi Matis Weinberg, a prominent youth leader and teacher in Yeshivat Derech Etz Chaim. I personally heard the story from the victim. He was very close with the Rabbi, who mentored him in how to lead a fulfilling life as a Jew. Little did my friend know, that this included the Rabbi getting in bed with him on a Shabbaton, kissing him on the lips, and cuddling up close. That story makes my stomach churn. Luckily, the victim's parents reacted relatively well, immediately getting him therapy and pressing charges against the Rabbi. The only problem is that they pressed charges via the Rabbinical Courts, who they felt could adequately deal with the matter. A quick rant-aside: we're not in the freaking ghetto anymore. We are in America, and are free to live amongst the nations. We do not need our own courts to deal in our own matters, there is a fair and equitable courts system in the United States that is more than equipped to deal with this kind of stuff. So the Rabbinical Court got together and heard the whole thing start to finish, frowned knowingly, and handed down the verdict of "A light slap on the tush." They said that the Rabbi couldn't teach at the Yeshiva anymore. Are you freaking kidding me?! Had he been convicted by a state or federal court in GA, he would have had to move into woodland homeless sex offender communities. I heard some of my other friends defend Matis Weinberg, saying that the whole thing was blown out of proportion, blah blah blah. And that is where the problem lies: these individuals yield so much power over their students, that even if they are in fact fucking sexual deviant perverts, no one will admit it. And the Orthodox Community has a LONG way to go in dealing with this, because I guarantee you that molestation didnt start in 2002. At YU, when the whole Baruch Lanner thing came to light, the YU rabbinical leadership were forced at the cajoling of the students and community to give a public apology for covering up Lanner's activity for so many years, and for stifling the victims, many of whom came forward to their "trusted" rabbis for guidance. The common pattern here is Rabbis molesting students, the rabbinical leadership doing nothing about it, and apologizing only after the harm-level has reached threshold. This is why I have lost alot of faith in Orthodoxy, because the belief system that is built on "the shoulders of giants," is really built on the backs of people. Nearly all of the laws we follow today are interpretations of the Torah by rabbis, dating from the times of the Gemara until Rav Moshe Feinstein. And these Rabbis are all people, and who is to say that they did not mishandle their interpretations of the law, just like they are currently mishandling both the students and their adjudication of child molestation within their ranks. Perhaps this speaks most to the benefits of an open society, a direction in which the Orthodox Community (sic Chareidim) is unfortunately not moving, in allowing all activities to be subject to the light of law, justice, truth, and reflection.
When I was in Yeshiva in Israel, a gung-ho young talmid looking for the way to live a meaningful life, I was fed hardliner dogma about the Ruach HaKodesh being present in Gedolim, how the Gedolim ARE daas torah, we are the chosen people. They stopped just short of saying, "we are god." But you know what I never heard? I never heard: "we are just people like everyone else, even just like those scary goyim." Jews need to get the hell out of their psychological ghetto. The fact that our current ideology is a reflection of 600 years of persecution is a shame, both that we were persecuted, and that we cannot leave the persecution, even when the persecutor is no more. For what do we need a rabbinical court, when the court can impose no meaningful punishment? The torah prescribes a court system with punishments for certain crimes. But now-a-days, the worst they can do is "cherem (excommunication)" which amounts to absolutely nothing contemporarily, as the shtetl no longer exists, and you can just move to a different part of the country or world. If the rabbinical courts would actually start whipping and executing people, it would be a different story. But they aren't, so those courts are castrated and irrelevent.

I feel awful for the victims, for the families, and most of all for all the people who looked up to these men for guidance in their lives. I suppose the final question (because all we are left with is questions) is does the awful fallacy of the teacher render his teachings incorrect? Can you still enjoy the fruit if the tree is rotten?