About the Recent Rabbinical Child Sex Abuse Scandal December 10, 2006

I couldn’t have said it better than Mishmar:

So for those who…sincerely wish to rid our community of a serious problem, I wish you hatzlacha and siyatta di shmaya.

On the other hand, those who see this as an excuse to tear down rabbinic authority or even the laws of the Torah itself, I say: save your breath. Greater people than you have tried and failed. Our Torah has lasted for more than 3000 years and will outlast this latest scandal.

Some journalists and bloggers are using this latest scandal as fodder for their premise that “rabbinic Judaism” (i.e. Jewish Law-abiding Judaism) is somehow either no longer necessary or in such need of revamping that its current form is not valid.

Some of them even, apparently, want to challenge Torah law itself.

The parsha of Noah ends with the story of the Tower of Bavel, where the people were united in their placing of a sword-bearing idol on the top of a tower, a symbol of their wanting to “fight with Hashem” (ch”v). Hashem spared their lives (because they were united, from here we see the power of unity — Chofetz Chaim), but still dispersed them throughout the world.

You can’t fight Hashem. You can’t fight the Torah. You won’t win.

A change in the system — a new claim in a beis din here, a precedent there, an overruling here, a redefinition there? No problem. But this Torah and its associated halachos/laws will always be here, as they always have been. Ken y’hi ratzon.