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Cleveland rabbi sentenced to prison for soliciting underage sex had a prominent Conservative rabbi as his character witness
(JTA) – A Cleveland-area rabbi was sentenced to six months in prison on Monday for soliciting underage sex, capping a sad and shocking saga for the area’s Jewish community.
Among those who testified on Stephen Weiss’ behalf in a bid for leniency was a prominent rabbi in the Conservative movement.
Weiss, formerly senior rabbi at B’nai Jeshurun Congregation in Pepper Pike, was sentenced for the crimes of attempted unlawful sexual conduct with a minor and possessing criminal tools. He had been arrested and charged after a sting operation last April and pleaded guilty to the two felony charges in January. Weiss, 61, will be required to register as a sex offender for 25 years.
Appearing as a character witness for Weiss at his sentencing hearing was Rabbi William Lebeau, a former dean of the rabbinical school and former vice chancellor at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Lebeau currently serves as a senior consultant for rabbinic and institutional leadership with the Rabbinical Assembly, the professional association for Conservative rabbis.
“I first met Rabbi Weiss when he was a rabbinical student and I’ve maintained a close relationship with him to this day. I’ve come from New York City this morning because I wanted to share with you in court my experiences with Rabbi Weiss over the more than three decades that I’ve known him,” Lebeau said as he opened a three-minute statement on Weiss’ behalf, according to a recording of the hearing.
In the rest of the statement, he described “the Rabbi Weiss that I know” as “beloved by his classmates and respected by his teachers,” “especially admired for his qualities of kindness and sensitivity,” “his inspirational teaching of children and adults” and his support for congregants experiencing trouble.
Lebeau noted that Weiss felt remorse and had sought professional help in the wake of his arrest.
“Significantly, over more than 30 years as a rabbi there was nothing close to a grievance about his rabbinic service or his personal conduct,” Lebeau said. “There was nothing that would have predicted this aberrant moment in his life. I respectfully ask you your honor to consider the case of Rabbi Weiss in the context of the life of devotion to his family and to his community that he lived prior to this tragic event.”
Weiss had already pleaded guilty to the crimes; Lebeau and Weiss’ daughter appeared as character witnesses as part of his attorney’s effort to secure a more lenient sentence. Weiss’ legal team had argued that his 2022 solicitation of an undercover police officer posing as an underaged boy was an aberration in Weiss’s three decades of rabbinical activities. His lawyer also cited a 2018 brain injury as a relevant factor in his behavior.
Some in the community questioned the decision of Lebeau, a widely admired mentor in the Conservative movement, to testify on Weiss’ behalf.
“I have a great deal of respect for Rabbi Lebeau. He’s a very important person in the movement,” Rabbi Noah Bickart, an endowed professor of Jewish studies at John Carroll University in Cleveland, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Bickart had been a student at JTS when Lebeau was its dean.
But, Bickart said, “Choosing to support and defend Rabbi Weiss here, as opposed to the community that was victimized or potentially victimized, was the wrong decision to make.”
In an email to JTA, Lebeau said, “I chose to make a personal statement referring to the Stephen Weiss I have known for 35 years and the qualities that defined him, as I said in the courtroom, ‘prior to this tragic event.’”
The Rabbinical Assembly, with which Lebeau is currently associated, had harshly condemned Weiss’ alleged behavior upon his initial arrest in April 2022 and suspended his membership, making him ineligible to apply for jobs or participate in other activities.
“These deeply disturbing accusations betray the sacred trust our communities put in their clergy and must be fully and immediately investigated and dealt with appropriately,” the group said in a joint statement with the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism at the time.
The Rabbinical Assembly began publicizing a list of suspended and expelled rabbis in 2021, amid a widespread reckoning over whether Jewish organizations had inappropriately obscured misconduct by rabbis and other leaders.
“Rabbi Lebeau’s testimony was not on behalf of the Rabbinical Assembly,” a Rabbinical Assembly spokesperson said in a statement this week, which noted that the group is now in the process of expelling Weiss permanently. “And his testimony did not seek to justify nor excuse the behavior for which Steven Weiss was convicted.
Lebeau had previously defended a different rabbi accused of inappropriate behavior towards children. In 2014, according to the Forward, he had supported a rabbi in Savannah, Georgia, who had given a lesson to a class of 9-year-olds about child sex trafficking filled with explicit language, alarming many parents.
Back then, Lebeau told the Forward the accused rabbi was “one of the kindest, most sensitive, caring people among all the students I met,” and expressed particular concern about the damage the incident could do to the rabbi’s reputation, saying, “This is a man’s life and a man’s reputation.” No crime was ever alleged to have taken place with the rabbi in Savannah.
Bickart said he was unfamiliar with the Savannah case but had a theory about why Lebeau spoke on behalf of the rabbis in both cases.
“I think Rabbi Lebeau honestly just wants to defend rabbis,” he said. “My sense is that Rabbi Lebeau is probably the go-to person to be a character witness for anybody.”
Still, Bickart said, he found the choice to testify on Weiss’ behalf meaningful.
“As somebody who’s a parent of a boy precisely the same age as the fictitious victim in this case, it’s hard for me to see an important rabbinic mentor seemingly take more seriously the concerns of a convicted sex offender than of the community,” Bickart said.
Prosecutors for Ohio’s task force on internet crimes against children disputed the arguments of Lebeau and Weiss’ attorney that Weiss’ conduct was a brief irregularity, saying that he had shown evidence of premeditated action. Weiss had previously sent explicit messages to an undercover officer posing as an underaged boy in 2020, and waited for hours in order to separate his target from his parents in 2022, when he was arrested.
B’nai Jeshurun, where Weiss had served since 2001, suspended the rabbi immediately upon his arrest in 2022, and he resigned days later. The congregation had determined in its own investigation that Weiss had not engaged in any illegal or illicit activity at the congregation itself. After Weiss’ sentencing was announced, the congregation’s president and senior rabbi emailed congregants to offer counseling services.
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The post Cleveland rabbi sentenced to prison for soliciting underage sex had a prominent Conservative rabbi as his character witness appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Ukraine reburies Nazi collaborator with state honors, drawing Israeli condemnation
(JTA) — Israel criticized Ukraine Monday after President Volodymyr Zelensky gave full state honors to a Ukrainian nationalist leader who was part of a movement that collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.
During a reburial ceremony on Sunday, Zelensky described Andriy Melnyk and his wife, Sofia Fedak-Melnyk, as “iconic Ukrainians of the 20th century who are deeply respected,” according to The New York Times.
Melnyk led one of the factions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists during its collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II. Though the Ukrainian organization shared a mutual opposition to Soviet rule with the Nazis, it also promoted antisemitic rhetoric and some of its members participated in the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust. Melnyk initially sought cooperation with Nazi Germany but was later detained by the Nazis as relations with Ukrainian nationalist groups deteriorated.
The ceremony marked the latest flashpoint in a longstanding dispute over Ukraine’s commemoration of World War II-era nationalist figures linked to Nazi collaboration. In 2018, the country designated the birthday of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera as a holiday, and in 2017, a statue was unveiled honoring a nationalist leader whose regime killed tens of thousands of Jews in pogroms during the Russian Revolution.
The remains of Melnyk and his wife were exhumed from Luxembourg last week and then transported to Ukraine for reburial at Kyiv’s National Military Memorial, which opened last year for soldiers killed in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Glory to every Ukrainian hero! Glory to all our Ukrainian warriors! Glory to our people!,” Zelensky, who is Jewish, wrote in a post on X marking the ceremony, adding that he was “grateful to everyone who has worked to make such returns of great Ukrainian figures possible and to give the Ukrainian People their own pantheon of heroes.”
The reburial was quickly decried by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, which wrote in a post on X that it was “deeply troubled by such national commemorations, which come at the expense of historical truth and the memory of Holocaust victims.”
“Honoring the leader of a movement that supported and collaborated with Nazi Germany during the persecution and murder of millions of Jews undermines the moral integrity essential to Holocaust remembrance,” the post read.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry wrote on X that there is “no place for ignoring historical truth and the memory of the victims murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.”
The post Ukraine reburies Nazi collaborator with state honors, drawing Israeli condemnation appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump administration again sues UCLA over antisemitism, alleging ‘hostile educational environment’
(JTA) — The U.S. Department of Justice sued the University of California for the second time this year over allegations of an antisemitic campus environment at UCLA, claiming the school “was deliberately indifferent to the suffering of its Jewish and Israeli students” after Oct. 7.
The federal lawsuit, filed Tuesday, claims UCLA violated the students’ civil rights by failing to intervene during pro-Palestinian encampment activity in early 2024. It follows an earlier suit that focused on the university’s treatment of its Jewish and Israeli employees, and comes 10 days after the university unveiled its own “Initiative to Combat Antisemitism.”
“Earlier this year, we sued UCLA for subjecting its Jewish and Israeli employees to an antisemitic hostile work environment,” assistant U.S. attorney general Harmeet Dhillon said in a press release. “Now, the Department of Justice calls UCLA to account for its toleration of the equally appalling hostile educational environment against its Jewish and Israeli students.”
Requests for comment to the Justice Department and UCLA were not immediately returned.
The new suit draws on widely reported accounts of UCLA’s campus environment in spring 2024, when protesters in pro-Palestinian encampments clashed with pro-Israel counter-protesters, sparking violence and turmoil. The failure to protect Jewish students violated their Title VI civil rights, attorneys said.
Citing the report of UCLA’s own task force on antisemitism, published in response to the 2024 campus upheaval, the suit states, “UCLA’s leadership apparently preferred a do-nothing ‘de-escalation strategy’ to protecting their Jewish and Israeli students from an angry mob organized by peers armed with tasers, lumber, and a sword.”
The Justice Department is seeking several redress measures, including the return of all federal grants made to UCLA “during the time of UCLA’s noncompliance with Title VI.” The school had previously resolved several Title VI antisemitism cases under the Biden administration, and also reached a $6.13 million settlement with Jewish groups in a private suit related to the spring 2024 incidents on campus — a case cited in DOJ’s new lawsuit.
The Trump administration has sought to make a particular example of UCLA in its aggressive approach to campus antisemitism. Officials had sought to levy fines in excess of $1 billion against the public university for its alleged failure to protect Jewish and Israeli students, until a federal judge intervened. Several DOJ lawyers have left the department over its UCLA investigation, telling reporters the case was “fraudulent,” a “sham” and driven by pressure to “find” evidence to support further legal action against UCLA.
In addition, some of the most violent clashes on the campuses included perpetrators on both sides of the conflict, leading some members of the UCLA Jewish community to complain that pro-Israel counter-protesters ultimately undercut the Jewish students’ legitimate grievances regarding the harassment they had been facing inside the campus gates.
And the campus environment for Jews remains tense. Last month, the UCLA student senate condemned a campus visit by a freed Israeli hostage, drawing blowback from a university regent.
The post Trump administration again sues UCLA over antisemitism, alleging ‘hostile educational environment’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Jewish leaders say Belgium’s prosecution of circumcision is antisemitic
(JTA) — Dozens of European Jewish leaders, joined by Israeli and American diplomats, decried Antwerp prosecutors who plan to charge two Jewish men with performing illegal circumcisions.
In an open letter on Tuesday to European and Belgian officials, 45 communal and religious Jewish leaders accused the Antwerp Public Prosecutor’s Office of “effectively criminalizing the act of circumcision” and infringing on religious freedom.
Earlier this month, Belgian prosecutors announced their recommendation to refer two mohels, or ritual circumcisers, to the criminal court following investigations into alleged illegal circumcisions.
In Belgium, the law requires all circumcisions to be performed by licensed medical professionals. The two men would be charged with intentional assault or battery against minors and the unlawful practice of medicine.
The European Jewish leaders responded that prosecuting mohels was “antisemitic in nature, reminiscent of efforts taken in Europe against Jewish practice prior to the Second World War.”
They said the potential prosecutions sent a message that “Jews are no longer welcome in Belgium” and “Belgian Jews are now second class citizens with limited rights.” Their appeal was led by the chairman of the European Jewish Association, Rabbi Menachem Margolin.
Israeli and U.S. officials have also accused Belgium of targeting Jews for practicing their faith.
Gideon Saar, Israel’s minister of foreign affairs, called the prosecutors’ decision a “scarlet letter on Belgian society.” He was joined by the U.S. ambassador to Belgium, Bill White, who said on X that Belgium “will be thought of now as anti Semitic by world.”
Belgium’s foreign minister fired back that it was “inappropriate to publicly criticize a country and tarnish its image simply because you disagree with judicial proceedings.”
“I recall that the proceedings in question were initiated by representatives of the Jewish community themselves,” said Maxime Prévot. “To portray those as a country’s desire to undermine the religious freedom of Jews is defamatory.”
The mohels were first investigated after complaints lodged by Moshe Aryeh Friedman, an Antwerp rabbi. He alleged in 2023 that six local mohels practiced metzitzah b’peh, in which the circumciser cleans the circumcision wound with oral suction. Over the past two decades, several infants in New York City were infected with herpes as a result of the practice.
The letter from European Jewish leaders did not address Friedman’s claims.
The post Jewish leaders say Belgium’s prosecution of circumcision is antisemitic appeared first on The Forward.