The Boruch Lanner case, which broke in 2000–along with many other contemporaneous pedophile cases of the time—broke my faith pretty hard.
The incidents described below (not my own commentary) come from Gary Rosenblatt’s article on Lanner for the Jewish Week, which is linked at the end of this article.
“When she…told Rabbi Lanner that she would inform his supervisor, she said the rabbi laughed and told her his supervisor already knew.”
These were NCSY kids. The youth group is owned by the Orthodox Union. Its system worked for Lanner, not the victims he choked and fondled and screamed at and lunged at with a kitchen knife.
“Those who have elected to tell their stories say they are motivated by anger and frustration over the refusal of the OU, the national central body of Orthodox synagogues, to act decisively on repeated complaints about Rabbi Lanner’s behavior.”
Lanner for all intents and purposes was NCSY. I went to NCSY. I lived in North Jersey. Thankfully I had nothing to do with him.
He was in Frisch. Thankfully my father sent me to Bruriah.
Lanner liked to touch boys in their groin area by kicking them there painfully.
He went after girls in sexual ways and let his rage out by choking at least one of them.
“Judy Klitsner…asserted that when she was a 16-year-old active in NCSY in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Rabbi Lanner, who was director of the Etz Chaim (N.J.) region, tried to caress and kiss her one evening during a Shabbaton in New Jersey.
“When she rebuffed him, she recalled recently, ‘he began to strangle me with all his strength, and it was only when he saw that I was losing consciousness that he threw me down and walked away.’”
Lanner also attempted to choke a boy.
Lanner liked to talk dirty to the high school girls and humiliate them.
He called NCSY kids to say “tell me you love me.”
He would hit or pinch on arms, legs, and thighs, leaving bruises.
One girl got smacked in the face. That came close to breaking her jaw.
His thing was to try to kiss and fondle girls when they were alone.
“Lisa Rabinowitz Dunn said when she was 13 and active in NCSY, Rabbi Lanner insisted on driving her home from a Shabbaton on a Saturday night. She alleges that he pulled over in a deserted parking lot, asked her to take off her shirt and roughly sought to kiss her.”
He was a sadistic, violent physical abuser prone to bouts of rage. No one was safe around Lanner.
“Rosie Shyker…says that when she was in high school and active in NCSY, she was subjected to ‘verbal and physical abuse’ from Rabbi Lanner…’And I would come home with bruises.”
“One night, while driving her home from a Shabbaton at about 3 a.m., Rabbi Lanner allegedly became enraged with something she said. ‘He stopped at a corner, and pushed me out of the car,’
she recalled.”
Lanner had his colleagues snowed by his brains and who wants to listen to a kid who can’t prove anything, anyway?
As one yeshiva principal said, defending Lanner, “It’s not as if he raped anyone.”
All of this went down under the “kosher supervision” of the Orthodox Union.
While times have changed, the fundamental commandment of “thou shalt not embarrass us” never went away.
I remember dealing with more than one pervert making more than one “ambiguous” comment in my time. I remember a high school rabbi telling me, when something spilled, that I should “lick it up.” This was in an all-girls yeshiva.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
See:
Gary Rosenblatt, “Stolen Innocence,” The Jewish Week, 2000. https://www.bjpa.org/content/upload/bjpa/stol/Stolen%20Innocence%20-%20Gary%20Rosenblatt%20-%20Jewish%20Week%20-%20Sexual%20Abuse.pdf
Book: “Between the Lines: A Collection from 20 Years of Columns” by Gary Rosenblatt. https://a.co/d/0ipeoQ0V
Photo of Rosenblatt’s book by the author.
Writing by Dr. Dannielle Blumenthal 