Special Newsletter: The Leib Tropper Scandal
David Shasha
Friends,
While it is certainly true that the Jewish community is not alone when it comes to political controversy, the profound loss of Torah values in our generation has been matched by the brazen conduct of those who deign to speak as guardians of those values. The loss of Torah values in the Jewish world is often related to religious hypocrisy and political wheeling and dealing.
The recent controversy of Rabbi Leib Tropper touches on many of the aspects of Jewish scandal that currently plague our communities.
Tropper is a big shot in the Jewish Conversion industry. He has made a great splash against more moderate approaches to Conversion and has sought to enforce a rigid Ultra-Orthodox understanding of the matter.
His ongoing battle to assert Ultra-Orthodox hegemony over Conversions has been supported by some very powerful Jews just as it has been rejected by others who would like to have the Conversion system streamlined and made more liberal.
According to the tenets of Jewish law, as discussed in Zvi Zohar and Avi Sagi’s critically important study Transforming Identity (my previously-published review essay on this book will be forwarded in a separate e-mail), Conversion is a relatively simply matter that has been made complicated by the stringencies of Ashkenazi Orthodoxy. In the end, much of the controversy engendered by individuals like Tropper is political in nature and reflects the ongoing attempt of the Ultra-Orthodox to control all aspects of Jewish identity, in both Israel and the Diaspora.
So the revelations that we present in this special newsletter of Tropper’s sexual misconduct are not simply tied to the Conversion issue. As the articles we have chosen indicate, Tropper has been running a Jewish scam in which many prominent Jewish leaders have been implicated.
Articles by Yair Ettinger and Michael Orbach lay out the story for us.
The next few articles first appeared in the Jewish publication Tablet magazine. Alison Hoffman provides us with an in-depth examination of the Tropper scandal and the various players involved in it. She shows a world of crony corruption that involves a number of mainstream figures and organizations in the American and Israeli Jewish communities.
Marisa Brostoff looks at the importance of Tropper’s project for the ongoing problem of Jewish identity and the politics of “Who is a Jew?”
But perhaps the most shocking article in the Tablet series is the transcription of phone conversations between Tropper and the woman who he was helping to convert to Judaism. The tapes contain shocking details of religious hypocrisy and are truly stomach-churning.
We end the special newsletter with three articles about figures and institutions involved with Tropper. Please pay careful attention to the Sephardic connections to the individuals mentioned in these stories.
The very week that Tablet ran its series of Tropper articles saw an innocuous story in the New York Times on one of Tropper’s well-connected friends, Thomas Kaplan. Kaplan and his extended family seem to be knee-deep in the Tropper business and have used their money and influence to assist Tropper’s organization. In Kaplan’s extended family is Guma Aguiar, the eccentric and unstable owner of a major Israeli soccer team, Beitar Jerusalem.
The newsletter closes with my article on the 92nd Street Y, a major New York Jewish institution which has been extremely unkind to Sephardim and to Arab Muslims.
In the end, the Tropper story contains many of the noxious elements of Jewish power run amuck. It shows the arrogance of that power and the ways in which connections are made among the various players in the Jewish world. These connections permit people like Tropper to do as the please, thus enabling misconduct and immorality.
It is a sad and cautionary tale that we would do well to pay attention to.
David Shasha
US Rabbi Involved in Sex Scandal Led Fight Against Israel Conversions
By: Yair Ettinger
Tropper Scandal Casts Pall on Orthodox Conversions
By: Michael Orbach
Con Game: Rabbi Leib Tropper, Conversions and Jewish Corruption
By: Alison Hoffman
Converted
By: Marisa Brostoff
Tale of the Tapes
By: Tablet Magazine
Prodigal Son
By: Alison Hoffman
Sunday Routine for Thomas S. Kaplan: Coffee for Me, Worms for Her
By: Robin Finn
The Improbable Twists of the Guma Aguiar Saga
By: Jeremy Last
Reading the 92nd Street Y Catalog: Sephardim and Arabs Need Not Apply
By: David Shasha