A rabbi was suspended for sexual misconduct. He never left the pulpit.

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Canadian Jew makes debut on China's hockey team, public school hosts Jesus assembly, Israel rejects Zoom conversion of basketball player, and remembering Metallica's Jewish founder.

OUR LEAD STORY

The sanctuary of Congregation Ohev Shalom in Pennsylvania. (Photo courtesy Siona Benjamin)

How a rabbi suspended for sexual misconduct is still in the pulpit

Rabbi Jeremy Gerber was suspended by the Conservative movement for sexual misconduct. Yet he never left the pulpit of his shul outside Philadelphia. As national Jewish institutions try to improve their reporting processes and accountability around misconduct, his case shows it can be a lot more complicated than it seems.

Our Arno Rosenfeld took a deep dive into the case, talking to the congregant who received sexual messages in 2018, conducting email interviews with Rabbi Gerber and Ohev Shalom’s lay leaders, reviewing documents and speaking to current and former members about the way the whole situation cleaved the congregation.

A limited sanction: The two-year suspension by the Rabbinical Assembly only applies to activities of that umbrella organization – not individual synagogues. So Gerber has continued sermonizing and spearheading the synagogue’s racial justice initiative. He offered a benediction at the Pennsylvania legislature. And, midway through his punishment for inappropriately texting a congregant about her sexual fantasies, he appeared on a sex-advice podcast and suggested a woman exchange sexual texts with her husband. “I remain a fully ordained rabbi with the privilege to carry out all my work,” Gerber said.

Question of power: Spurred by the #MeToo movement, many leading Jewish organizations and seminaries have taken steps over the past year to review and overhaul their misconduct policies. But in the decentralized American Jewish world, these groups do not hire or fire rabbis and have little authority over the thousands of individual synagogues, schools, camps and JCCs where most Jews interact with them. “It is very hard to create change at that very intimate level,” said Rabbi Mary Zamore, head of a women’s rabbinic group.

Fallout remains: Gerber’s synagogue conducted its own investigation and decided that keeping him was best for the community; the board also created a new code of conduct for clergy. Divisions over that decision drove about a dozen families, including some major machers and the woman Gerber inappropriately texted, to leave the shul. “I can forgive him for the sexual misconduct, but I can’t forgive the theft of the synagogue,” she told us.

Read our exclusive investigation ➤

ALSO FROM THE FORWARD

His Jewish great-grandparents found refuge in China. Now he’s starting for its Olympic hockey team. When you finish reading this morning’s newsletter, turn on the TV. At 8 a.m. ET, China’s men’s hockey team will take on the U.S. and it’ll be your first chance to watch Ethan Werek in action. “I kind of pinch myself every morning,” he told our Louis Keene in a phone interview from Beijing. “I just feel so lucky to be given this opportunity.” Up next? This summer he’ll be running a hockey camp in Tel Aviv. Read the story ➤

In other Olympic news: Israel’s Barnabas Szollos had an amazing slalom run, the second fastest in that segment, and finished sixth overall in the Alpine combined competition. His younger sister, Noa, finished 41st in the women’s slalom. Inside, Jason Brown, a Jewish figure skater from Chicago whose routine is set to the theme from “Schindler’s List,” posted a personal-best score of 97.24 and is in sixth place going into today’s free skate.

Which college campus is the most antisemitic? The University of Vermont reported the most incidents of antisemitism of U.S. campuses in 2021, according to data released this week. It was followed by Tufts University and George Washington University. Most of the submissions named students as perpetrators, though 122 also cited professors, and many blamed clubs or administrators. Some context: A 2020 investigation by the Forward found that universities fail to report more than half the antisemitic incidents that happen on campus to the federal government as hate crimes. Read about the new survey ➤

Meanwhile, at the U.S. Capitol...

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

A Christian revival stirred controversy at Huntington High School in West Virginia.

✝️ More than 100 students in Huntington, West Virginia, staged a walkout on Wednesday after a high school assembly that felt like an evangelical Christian revival, with teenagers being asked to accept Jesus or go to hell. “I’m not knocking their faith, but there’s a time and place for everything,” said one local Jewish mom, “and in public schools, during the school day, is not the time and place.” (AP)

🏀 A Black basketball player hoping to join an Israeli team was denied citizenship because his conversion to Judaism was conducted over Zoom. “Hasn’t Israel experienced COVID as well? I mean this decision shows so much disconnect,” said Michael Beals, the Conservative rabbi from Delaware who oversaw the conversion. Beals said it was “racist” and an “insult to the Conservative movement.” (Haaretz)

🏈 And while we’re talking sports, a defensive tackle for the newly renamed Washington Commanders said he wished he could dine with Hitler. “I would want to pick his brain as to why he did what he did,” explained Jonathan Allen. (JTA)

📚 Walk into your local Costco, and you may be surprised to see that its “Buyer’s Pick” for February is a book about a Jew who revealed the location of Anne Frank’s family to the Nazis. Since the book’s release last month, historians have challenged its explosive findings, causing the publisher to stop printing copies. But Costco promotional material called the book a “modern whodunit.” (JTA)

📱 More than a dozen religious leaders have called on Facebook’s parent company, Meta, to scrap plans to launch Instagram for kids. “After much meditation and prayer, we assert that social media platforms that target immature brains, practice unethical data mining, and are inspired by profit motives are not a tool for the greater good of children,” said the letter, whose signers include several rabbis. (Reuters)

Update ➤ Yesterday we shared a story about how dozens of Harvard professors had signed a letter defending a Jewish colleague accused of sexual harassment. Well, now they’ve retracted. (New York Times)

Shiva call ➤ Jon Zazula, a promoter of heavy metal bands whose label released Metallica’s first albums, has died at 69. He first worked in finance, but got caught up in a fraud scheme of passing off scrap metal as rare. He and his wife, Marsha, started promoting concerts and later launched Megaforce Records. “They personally plastered telephone poles with fliers, and band members often crashed at their house,” says a New York Times obituary. Metallica posted a tribute on Twitter: “In 1982, when no one wanted to take a chance on four kids from California playing a crazy brand of metal, Jonny and Marsha did, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

What else we’re reading ➤ A New Jersey rabbi hired a hitman to murder his wife. Now, there’s a musical about the case … Here are the Democratic primaries in the U.S. where Israel is a hot topic …. What’s with Judaism’s pork taboo? A new documentary, ‘Magnificent Beast,’ gets into the muck.

ON THE CALENDAR

On this day in history: Stella Adler, the most famous member of an acting dynasty that grew out of the Yiddish theater district on New York’s Lower East Side, was born on Feb. 10, 1901. Adler appeared in more than 200 plays, and helped shape the careers of Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro, among many others. “Get a stage tone, darling, an energy,” she advised students at her Stella Adler Studio of Acting, which continues operating today. “Never go on stage without your motor running.”

In the video above, from our friends at the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project, Ellen Adler Oppenheim, Stella’s daughter, talks about seeing her mother teach and her memories of some of the most successful students. Watch now ➤

Last year on this day, we introduced readers to Melissa Rein Lively, the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, who described her “freefall” into wild conspiracies that led her to become a Jewish QAnon supporter. “They don’t call it a rabbit hole for nothing,” she said.

On the Hebrew calendar, it’s the 9th of Adar when, in the 1st century BCE, the Talmudic academies of Hillel and Shammai had their first debate. Read Jodi Rudoren’s ode to Shammai.

VIDEO OF THE DAY

That noodle kugel you’ve been eating all these years is a modern meh, according to the hosts of the Forverts cooking show, “Est Gezunterheyt.” (God bless you.) Most such kugels are sweet, but Rukhl Schaechter and Eve Jochnowitz favor a more savory version, more common in the Old World. Oh, and one more thing: They make it in a frying pan. Have your fire extinguisher ready at the three-minute mark. Watch the video ➤

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Thanks to Louis Keene and Arno Rosenfeld for contributing to today’s newsletter.

You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com.

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