The Orthodox Union and NCSY Offer Award Named For Serial Abuser’s Enabler

Rabbi Pinchas Stolper is the founder of NCSY, the Orthodox Union's (OU) youth group. and was the long-time executive vice president of the OU. He is a hero to the Orthodox generally, and to the kiruv movement specifically. “Kiruv” is the movement to bring non-Orthodox Jews to Orthodoxy. Literally, it means "to bring close." And one of NCSY’s longtime generals did take that literally. The convicted Baruch Lanner, who was recently released from jail but remains on parole, habitually abused teens by kneeing boys and touching girls. He abused a lot of teens because he was a senior “outreach professional” at NCSY for decades.

Rabbi Stolper was the one who hired Baruch Lanner. And Rabbi Stolper could have (and should have) stopped him. But he didn’t, and neither did anyone else in the Orthodox Union or NCSY.

The NY Jewish Week reported in its breaking story, "Stolen Innocence,"

Rabbis Butler and Stolper say they never heard specific allegations, but Rabbi Stolper acknowledges there were several complaints from young women many years ago about improper behavior by Rabbi Lanner. Rabbi Stolper says he sought to deal with the allegations but found no real substance to the charges.

At the time, he says he warned Rabbi Lanner in no uncertain terms that if he ever heard such accusations again, even if they could not be proved, he would have to dismiss him because "NCSY lives on the reputation of the community, the parents and the synagogues."

But decades after Rabbi Stolper says he heard reports of Rabbi Lanner's improper behavior with girls or, in at least one case, kicking a boy in the groin, Rabbi Lanner has remained in a leadership role and in regular contact with young people through NCSY.

He “heard” about one. Others heard about a lot more.

Some 30 witnesses testified to having suffered or witnessed Rabbi Lanner kneeing the boys in the groin. To be fair, these kicks do appear to have encouraged some boys to take the mitzvah of wearing tzitzit more seriously. Others did not always react so well to Lanner’s gentle rebukes.

You win some; you lose some. Kiruv is a numbers game.

For Stolper, it was Lanner himself who was the true victim.He couldn't think of anyone "who had suffered as much."

Stolper tried to put the complaints from the ungrateful into perspective.

"He has had such a magnificent impact" on so many young people, Rabbi Stolper says in defense of Rabbi Lanner, "despite some obvious sickness that is not sexual but has to do with needing to be in control."

 

Kneeing and touching (yeah, down there) are only the most egregious behaviors Stolper and others routinely enabled. The full list of abuses is so long…the victims so many…but the numerous pleas to stop him were consistently thwarted by the Orthodox Union and NCSY. And those who thwarted Lanner’s removal generally remain in solid standing within the Orthodox community, and even within the Orthodox Union itself.

When the liberal Jewish community--often sluggish in comprehending how differently the Orthodox think--finally became aware of what was happening, they shut that party down fast. Certainly liberal Jewish groups are not handing out “Stolper Awards.”

Only the Orthodox Union and NCSY are doing that.  On January 11th, Rabbi Avi Berman will receive a Stolper Service Award. At the 13th Annual Ben Zakkai Honor Society reception.

The OU reports,

In addition to inaugurating the Julia Macy a"h Memorial Scholarship, this year’s BZHS celebration will also pay special honor and tribute to […]Rabbi Avi Berman (Jerusalem) with the Rebbetzin Elaine and Rabbi Pinchas Stolper Service Award.

 

Now you might ask, what knuckleheads are agreeing to this? Well, that's what my friend Shmarya Rosenberg of Failed Messiah asked. As it turns out, it includes many of the same rabbis who defended Lanner and his enablers when they were finally busted.

I see Mandell Ganchrow, the president of the OU at that time. I see Rabbi Basil Herring, who felt the Jewish Week need not have published even its initial article at all. The OU would certainly have cleaned house if only, only, they had known about what was happening. Rabbi Stolper himself is on the committee. Ten pages of names...so many names...so many machers. You can download the invitation pdf on Failed Messiah.

The OU-sponsored Richard Joel (oh, he's on the committee including the Pinchas Stolper Award as well) commission noted that NCSY, the Orthodox Union, and the Modern Orthodox community generally had “failed to take responsibility.” The leadership – including Rabbi Pinchas Stolper – was condemned.

Rabbi Stolper has never publicly apologized for his critical role in enabling his protégé.

In addition to Stolper, they also kept up appearances with Matt/Mordechai Tropp, Lanner’s “hatchet man,” who leads Aish HaTorah’s “Project Inspire,” but is curiously not mentioned as an employee on the website. To be fair, Tropp was pushed out of NCSY proper for his role in the Lanner affair – a mere six years after the initial story broke, long after Lanner’s conviction. As always in these situations, Tropp wasn’t fired. Why should he have been? He was only trying to make people frum (Orthodox). The OU continued to work with Tropp even after he moved on to Big Aish's subsidiary. But they eventually stopped when too many non-Orthodox Jews complained.

No reference of Baruch Lanner has survived for long on NCSY's Wikipedia page.

The abuse has long ended, but NCSY’s general “failure to take responsibility” continues. And it continues because unlike all other major Jewish youth groups seeking liberal and secular Jewish teens, NCSY does not answer to our community even though we represent over half its constituency. NCSY answers to the Orthodox Jewish leadership and membership of the OU. NCSY is prosyletization without representation.

And their reach in the non-Orthodox underage world is growing dramatically, through their “cultural” programming in our public schools. The JSUs (Jewish “Student” Unions) are now in over 250 of our public schools. Most (though not all) of the “cool advisors” just happen to be NCSY “outreach professionals.” and the “dean” of the JSU is Rabbi Steven Burg, the international director of NCSY.

NCSY's JSU recruits students by offering them free pizza, and from there guides teens first to off-campus events (and more overtly NCSY programming) such as Latte and Learning, and from there, to NCSY’s Shabbatons.

This is how they “make them frum.”

But though NCSY has a left border that deems Liberal Judaism's institutions unacceptable to NCSY, there is not a discernible right border. At least not one we should be comfortable with. Rather, NCSY takes pride in making public school students not only Orthodox, but ultra-Orthodox. Horrifically, NCSY boasted to their membership how their club at Stuyvesant High School had succeeded in convincing teens to decline a top-notch college education in the OU organ, Jewish Action.

Many club members ended up turning down the finest universities in the nation, including Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Boston University, Brandeis, New York University and other esteemed institutions of higher learning in order to engage in some genuine “higher learning.” Some of us went to study at Ohr Somayach or Kol Yaakov in Monsey, New York. One member deferred Harvard for a few years, ultimately becoming one of the metzuyanim of the Mir Yeshiva kollel in Yerushalayim (and undoubtly left someone in the admissions office in Cambridge scratching his head). Two club members went to Neve Yerushalayim College in Jerusalem, where they strengthened their commitment to Torah before continuing on to Stern College for Women. In truth, deciding to defer college in order to further our Jewish education was the proper application of the Stuyvesant school motto, “Pro scientia atque sapientia” (For knowledge and wisdom).

This is who operates in our public school system as a “cultural” group.

But to be fair, NCSY’s value system—a value system quite different than our own -- is only our problem if a teen chooses (or if his/her parents choose) to have their teen attend an NCSY program, or in the off chance that they elect to enlist their teen in a public school with a JSU. Many of these JSUs are supported by local Jewish federations, according to the JSU website.

NCSY is pretty religious. NCSY denounces and discourages the use of condoms as rabbinically forbidden. NCSY discourages students from shaking hands with the opposite sex in "normal circumstances."

Additionally, NCSY has retained ties to ultra-Orthodox and even haredi (right-wing ultra-Orthodox) yeshivas and seminaries in Israel, and Rabbi Burg has declined to create a public list of approved yeshivas and seminaries where NCSY will send liberal and secular Jewish teens for the sake of transparency and review. A cynic might say this is precisely in order to allow regional directors and advisors to continue recruiting teens for the ultra-Orthodox institutions in Israel at their discretion, as they have done for decades, or allow such institutions access to their teens, but perhaps Burg is just too busy standardizing NCSY and OU logos.

NCSY’s director of alumni (the one who negotiates Israel programs for teens after they graduate public school), “Rabbi Dave” Felsenthal, is a triple product of the ultra-Orthodox and deceptive Aish HaTorah.

All of these issues are problematic. But the expansion into our public school system may be the most important one we are currently facing from NCSY.

The JSU site claims,

“The mission of Jewish Student Union is to get more Jewish teens attending public high schools to do something Jewish! That’s it! It’s that simple!!!”

Stolper taught NCSY quite well. There is a continuity of Stolper’s vision and modus operandi at NCSY. Not getting distracted or derailed by the value system, will, or complaints of liberal and secular Jewry. Penetrating the marketplace of non-Orthodox teenage Jews through ecumenical fronts and platitudes. But as has always been the case, “making them frum” remains paramount.

I would sardonically note that they should create an award for such behavior…but they already have.

Today the president of the Orthodox Union announced that the OU seeks to double the current size of NCSY, in order to reach more “unaffiliated” (read: "non-Orthodox") teens.