Stolper was operating in emergency times
December 15, 2008 NCSY, Orthodox Union
Why did Rabbi Pinchas Stolper not stop Lanner? Perhaps because he was in the middle of a war. Or rather, because he was in the middle of a genocide. You know, assimilation.
“It’s another Holocaust,” said Stolper.
I think when you consider that Stolper was just trying to stop The American Holocaust, you can better understand why he felt had to enable Baruch Lanner to keep doing his thing. After all, it’s a Holocaust! A Holocaust!
And anytime a Jewish leader or organization references assimilation in such strong language, understand, they are revealing a tendency for an ends justifies the means approach. They are not to be trusted.
Rabbi Avi Berman will be receiving this year’s Pinchas Stolper Award on January 11th.
NCSY remains the house that Pinchas built.
6 comments
DK, get on with your bad self. Obviously there is no excuse for what Lanner did, and was allowed to get away with, for so many years. Stolper should have put the pieces together sooner.
But we were all a lot more naive then; we assumed, wrongly, that this would never happen with a nice frum guy like Lanner. Awareness of the situation, awareness of the characteristics, patterns, and methods of abusers, molesters, and manipulators is a lot better than it was once.
The loss of innocence is a sad thing, nevertheless, those who used that innocence to exploit others must never be allowed to do so again. Now we know. If ignorance were ever an excuse, it just isn’t anymore.
Do you think that it is appropriate for NCSY and the OU to honor R. Stolper? Do you disagree that “kiruv” being paramount was part of the problem? Do you disagree that kiruv is still paramount to NCSY outside of actual abuse?
I don’t think that the goal of “kiruv” per se was to blame. Haven’t we seen enough cases of mistaken assumption of innocence and abuse of “dan lchaf zchut” over the past few years?
Stolper made a bad call and stuck by it and by Lanner for too long. Does this invalidate everything else he did with the OU? Dunno.
Yes, kiruv is still paramount to NCSY. So? Fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly.
C. Siegel, I understand NCSY’s POV. I just don’t think it is an appropriate one for secular and liberal Jews, a community they service. I think secular and liberal Jews might resent that the OU continues to honor a man largely responsible for enabling abuse for decades. We’ll see. I suspect that if there was a nice big protest outside the event, and if the parents understood that NCSY was in their public schools, many liberal and secular Jews would decide that a Stolper Service Award was quite unacceptable.
I think you’re mixing the issues. There is the fact of Stolper’s failure to identify the abuse and excoriate the abuser, and then there is your opinion that NCSY is not appropriate for the children of secular and liberal Jewish parents, one assumes for ideological reasons.
I see a continuum of an underlying problem, yes.
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