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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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Lawmakers seek 100-foot buffer zone around houses of worship to protect prayer goers from protests
(JTA) — A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a federal legislation Thursday in the House and Senate aimed at protecting houses of worship from disruptive demonstrations, following a series of protests outside of synagogues this year.
The Right to Worship Act was introduced by Sens. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, and Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat, alongside Reps. Brad Knott, a North Carolina Republican, and Tom Suozzi, a New York Democrat. It would establish a 100-foot “buffer zone” around houses of worship during religious services — mirroring similar legislation recently enacted in New York.
“The First Amendment guarantees every American the right to freely exercise their faith, and Congress has a duty to ensure that guarantee is met,” Cruz said in a statement Thursday.
The legislation would also establish civil penalties for offenders and provide pathways for individuals, including state attorneys, to seek court orders and damages in federal court. While the legislation would target protesters who knowingly disrupt scheduled religious services, houses of worship would not be required to make their schedules public.
The bill’s sponsors say the measure is aimed at conduct rather than the content of protesters’ speech.
“No one should have to push through a hostile crowd or shout over a bullhorn in an attempt to pray,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League, which helped lawmakers draft the legislation.
It’s the latest attempt at passing federal legislation aimed at insulating houses of worship from protest, following Suozzi’s “SACRED Act” legislation, a similar bill he introduced in April but which has not progressed in the House.
Those efforts have now been joined by Slotkin, who is Jewish, and Cruz, who has often taken aim at antisemitism within the Republican coalition over the past year.
“Exercising your right to worship should not require you to exhibit particular courage as you enter your synagogue, church, mosque, temple, mandir, or gurdwara,” Suozzi said in a statement.
The New York City Council passed a local buffer zone bill in March following a series of pro-Palestinian protests outside of synagogues that hosted Israeli real estate expos. While Jewish groups and leaders heavily advocated for the measure, it also faced opposition from civil rights leaders who said it would have a chilling effect on First Amendment protections.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Lawmakers seek 100-foot buffer zone around houses of worship to protect prayer goers from protests appeared first on The Forward.
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Over 95% of Canadian Jewish university students report exposure to antisemitism
(JTA) — Nearly all Jewish students surveyed on Canadian university campuses said they have experienced or witnessed antisemitism, according to a new government-commissioned report.
The survey from the Department of Canadian Heritage found that 95.7% of Jewish students said they were exposed to antisemitism, with 70% saying their university did not take antisemitism seriously and 22% reporting physical violence against Jews.
“Antisemitism on Canadian campuses is neither isolated nor episodic,” said Jack Jedwab, the report’s main author, at a press conference in Ottawa on Wednesday. “It can reasonably be described as systemic.”
The surveyed students anonymously detailed rhetoric, discriminatory treatment, vandalism, intimidation and physical attacks from their classmates as well as professors and administrators. Some 45% said they experienced Holocaust denial or distortion often or sometimes, and 65% said they encountered it “at least rarely.”
One respondent said they had witnessed a friend who wears a kippah being chased out of a school building by a group of students who shouted, “There is a Jew … let’s get him.”
Another student described a professor writing that “we need to kill all Zionists, that she had worked with them and saw how evil they were.” Students also said they were pressured by peers and professors to give their opinions on Israel because they were openly Jewish.
Some 36% of respondents complained about course content or classroom discussions that “they experienced as antisemitic or biased,” while 34% said “a professor introduced Jews, Judaism, Israel, or Zionism when unrelated to the course subject.”
The survey, out Wednesday as part of a report titled Campus Antisemitism and Student Experiences, included about 900 Jewish students from schools across Canada. It was originally conducted for the government’s special envoy on antisemitism, a role that Prime Minister Mark Carney’s administration dissolved alongside an Islamophobia envoy earlier this year.
Carney replaced those offices with a new Ministerial Advisory Council on Rights, Equality, and Inclusion, which he announced in June after saying that the country was “failing Jewish Canadians.” The new council was introduced as a push to unify the government’s approach toward combating systemic prejudice, but some Jewish groups decried the elimination of distinct envoys.
Pressure has mounted on Carney’s administration to stem the tide of antisemitic attacks in Canada since 2023, including gunfire at Jewish schools and synagogues and attacks on Jewish businesses and community centers.
On the same day the report was released, an Oklahoma-based organization called Jewish Tulsa made news for urging President Donald Trump’s administration to offer refugee status to Jewish Canadians.
“With the urgency around the challenges and the inaction we see in Canada, an asylum pathway makes sense,” Joe Roberts, who leads the conservative think tank, told The Canadian Press. He said that his family moved from Ontario to Tulsa after witnessing antisemitic graffiti in his neighborhood.
Martha Piper, former president of the University of British Columbia, said the campus antisemitism report revealed “a shocking presence of campus antisemitism throughout this country along with a troubling institutional failure to respond.”
“The results suggest a university culture that is not welcoming to Jewish students and systemically tries to exclude and vilify them,” said Piper.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Over 95% of Canadian Jewish university students report exposure to antisemitism appeared first on The Forward.
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British Conservatives face backlash for nominating a former neo-Nazi for local office
(JTA) — LONDON — Britain’s Conservative Party has defended its decision to endorse a former neo-Nazi activist as a candidate in next year’s local elections despite his imprisonment for crimes including racially aggravated harassment of Jewish former Labour MP Luciana Berger.
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said the candidate, Joshua Bonehill-Paine, had demonstrated rehabilitation through his work in countering extremism. Berger, who was prominent in the last decade for her many battles against antisemitism on the right and in her own party, said in a statement that Badendoch “got this very, very wrong.”
“This case still haunts me,” Berger, who is now a peer in the House of Lords, posted on X on Tuesday afternoon. “I feel a bit sick reading well known commentators debate his selection today and say that ‘these are precisely the people we need in public office’.”
Bonehill-Paine, 33, was imprisoned for more than two years after being convicted of multiple crimes. Bonehill-Paine had called himself “a proud antisemite” while planning a 2015 rally that aimed to undo the “Jewification of Great Britain.”
Bonehill-Paine will run for the Crewkerne South seat on Somerset Council in southwest England in May 2027, less than a decade after his release from prison in 2018. His incarceration came after he was prosecuted for sharing what a judge described as “vile” antisemitic material ahead of a planned neo-Nazi demonstration, as well as for racially aggravated harassment after publishing a series of antisemitic blog posts targeting Berger.
Among other slurs, he referred to Berger as an “evil money-grabber,” depicted her as a rodent and said the number of Jewish Labour MPs was “a problem.”
According to the Guardian, Bonehill-Paine said the Conservative Party and his local branch were aware of his past before selecting him. He told the Guardian that since his release from prison he has spoken publicly against antisemitism and extremism and has completed government-backed radicalization and counter-extremism programs.
The Conservative Campaign Headquarters responded to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency request for comment by relaying Badendoch’s remarks to reporters in Surrey on Tuesday morning.
“I think people can look at me and know that I’m not a person who would be recruiting neo-Nazis,” said Badenoch, who was raised in Nigeria and who has become an outspoken critic of rising antisemitism in Britain. “Josh is someone who actually has been certified by the Home Office to train police officers on antisemitism and on countering extremism.”
She acknowledged Bonehill-Paine’s conviction but said he has “shown contrition for his crimes, has been rehabilitated and is spending every day working to solve the very problem which he knew he had caused previously.”
She added that he is “actively working to help communities, especially Jewish communities and this is what I want to see.”
The backlash from Jewish organizations has been swift . Board of Deputies of British Jews Vice President Karen Newman stated, “It beggars belief that any party would select as a candidate a multiply convicted felon and the founder of a far-right group called National British Resistance.”
She also noted that the board had contacted the Conservative Party “to set out our concerns and call on them to rescind his selection and review their vetting processes.”
The Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council put out a separate joint statement saying they had declined the Conservative Party’s invitation to meet with Bonehill-Paine, stating that his “crimes targeting Luciana Berger and others mean that he still faces ongoing legal restrictions.”
They added, “Whilst we do believe in the possibility of rehabilitation, this should not in this case entail selection as a candidate for a major political party, and the impact of this decision on the victims ought to be a central consideration.”
Both organizations said they had agreed to meet with members of the party “to discuss their decision-making processes and to urge them to rescind this decision.”
The Jewish Labour Movement called the decision “truly appalling,” saying that Bonehill-Paine’s record, and particularly his attacks on Berger, should have disqualified him from elected office. “This is a former Neo-Nazi who was sent to prison for racially abusing a Jewish politician,” the group said.
Berger represented Liverpool Wavertree from 2010 until 2019 and entered the House of Lords last year. During her tenure she received constant antisemitic abuse, both online and in person, and was the target of several criminal incidents involving extremist harassment.
Bonehill-Paine did not respond to JTA’s requests for comment.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post British Conservatives face backlash for nominating a former neo-Nazi for local office appeared first on The Forward.
