JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Things don’t just disappear, I thought to myself, when I learned in 2010 that the Torah my grandmother carried out of war-ravaged Poland wasn’t in the Great Synagogue of Jerusalem, where it was supposed to be. I’m a person who misplaces things frequently, and so I have to tell myself this often. It is this…
Ever since the Forward began publishing stories in December detailing allegations by former students that they were abused by rabbis at Yeshiva University High School for Boys, a certain trope has been voiced by Y.U.’s defenders. It goes something like this: The alleged incidents occurred as long as three decades ago. They are, if not…
Rabbi George Finkelstein was quietly forced out of Yeshiva University High School for Boys in 1995 because of inappropriate wrestling with students that some of them considered abusive. But the Forward has learned that the wrestling did not stop after his departure from Y.U. It continued during Finkelstein’s next two posts, as dean of a…
Seeking to blunt an outpouring of criticism from alumni, Yeshiva University has issued a statement emphasizing the wide-ranging powers and broad scope of an investigation into allegations of sexual abuse against former staff members at its Manhattan high school. Y.U. launched the investigation in December after the Forward published the testimony of four former students…
Yeshiva University has declined to say if it will make public the results of an investigation into sexual abuse allegations at its Manhattan high school despite former students’ fears about the scope, openness and motivation behind the probe. In a statement to the Forward, released January 8, a Y.U. representative promised “a full and completely…
An attorney who just won a landmark sex abuse lawsuit against an elite private school has been retained to represent a former student with similar claims against Yeshiva University. Kevin Mulhearn has been hired by Mordechai Twersky, the first of almost two dozen students to come forward claiming they were abused decades ago while studying…
On December 13, the Forward published an explosive story by our Paul Berger detailing how Yeshiva University for years ignored students who claimed that they were sexually abused by two former staff members at Y.U.’s high school for boys in Manhattan. For that story, Berger spoke to four students who voluntarily offered their accounts. Since…
After the Forward published an investigation into sexual abuse allegations against two former staff members at a high school for boys run by Yeshiva University, Y.U. issued an immediate statement and said that it would investigate. Later that day, Modern Orthodoxy’s official rabbinic association, the Rabbinical Council of America, said it was “deeply troubled” by…
