Israel should not grant citizenship to convicted pedophile Baruch Lanner.

Israel already has an appalling record of providing safe haven for sex predators. The Baruch Lanner story simply confirms what we know: Israel protects abusers, not victims.

Baruch Lanner got his residency visa to Israel last week.

The fact that he served a prison sentence for sexual assault that he carried out for decades in his role as one of the heads of NCSY and as principal of Hillel in Deal, New Jersey apparently did not matter to the Jewish state.

Nor does it matter that many of his victims live in Israel.

Can you imagine how this affects the victims? Imagine bumping into the man who abused you — in shul, on the bus, in the supermarket….

Convicted Pedophile Baruch Lanner

Of course we shouldn’t be surprised. Look at how Israel harbored Malka Leifer despite years of demands for her extradition to Australia to stand trial on 79 counts pedophilia and sexual abuse. She was protected by then-health minister Yaakov Litzman, who is finally facing justice for his corruption.

A 2016 report found that 32 pedophiles and sexual predators found safe haven in Israel. By 2020, that number had risen to 60.

So much for Israel as a light unto the nations.

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To give you a sense of what we are talking about, Gary Rosenblatt of The Jewish Week collected testimonies from dozens of women who were his campers, members of his youth group, and students. The testimonies described decades of abuse, including “Rabbi Lanner's alleged kissing and fondling scores of teenage girls in the ‘70s and '80s, repeatedly kicking boys in the groin, and reports of taking a knife to a young man in 1987, and propositioning girls in 1997 at the yeshivah high school where he was principal for 15 years.” Judy Klitsner, a leading Jerusalem educator, was 16 years old when Lanner assaulted her. According to her testimony, he tried to caress and kiss her one evening during a Shabbaton in New Jersey. When she rebuffed him, "he began to strangle me with all his strength, and it was only when he saw that I was losing consciousness that he threw me down and walked away." He was described as someone who “preyed on the insecurities of young people and fostered a cult of personality, using his power to manipulate and control us when we were vulnerable.” AS Gary Rosenblatt wrote, “The emotional power Rabbi Lanner had over these impressionable youngsters was formidable. ‘He was like a god to us,’ several men and women said. They basked in his praise, but if he turned on them, and he could do so easily, they were bereft. The price he demanded was loyalty. ‘I was not allowed to criticize or question him. I had to trade in my dignity and honesty for the feeling of power he gave me. And I had to give up control of my life to him.’”

Lanner was a classic manipulator, who used his charm to have his way with students — and gain the support of his supervisors. He kept his job for nearly 30 years because those who hired him thought that this kind of “charisma” was a good thing. NCSY head Rabbi Pinchas Stolper who died earlier this year knew about the abuse but failed to act on them.

This dynamic of Jewish leaders protecting abusers at the expense of the victims is far more widespread than we would like to believe. And the fact that Lanner’s support has now spread to the State of Israel is just one more element of how sexual abuse works, and how high-profile abusers receive high-profile support.

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I detail the problematic issue of venerating so-called charisma in abusers in my book, When Rabbis Abuse, excerpted here:

Veteran Jewish educator Paul Shaviv wrote about a phenomenon he calls “the Pied Piper” syndrome in Jewish schools,  referring to the teacher who has charisma, a disdain for rules, anti-establishment ideas and behaviors, an abhorrence of authority over him, and a tendency and to leave a “trail of wreckage” behind him:

‘Pied Pipers’—charismatic teachers who misuse their charisma—tend to break boundaries and in doing so become very attractive to their students, especially if their home situations are less than ideal. The Pied Piper becomes substitute a father figure and certain adolescents willfully follow them in an almost abnormal way. Often, very often, these Pied Pipers turn out to have a sexually abusive dimension.

They can be brilliant in inspiring students to go beyond their wildest expectations, and are often regarded (by their following of students, by parents, and by the Board or the community) as the ‘most important’ or ‘best’ members of staff. There is always, however, a price to be paid. The teacher’s personality becomes the center of the classroom rather than the course content. A ‘Pied Piper’ will deeply affect and influence some students—but will almost always leave a trail of emotional wreckage in his/her wake.

Baruch Lanner is a classic example of the Pied Piper, the one who has “special” status because he seems to have a constant following among kids—no matter what he is actually doing to them. One of his self-described defenders, Dr. John Krug, a psychologist who was hired by Lanner when he was principal of the Hillel Yeshivah High School in Deal, NJ, and worked with him there for more than a dozen years, said, “He's a combination genius and talmid chochem [scholar]. He's very charismatic, flamboyant, given to histrionics. He's the master of the double entendre and he marches to a different drummer.” One of Lanner’s victims, Dena Greenspan Lehrman, recalled how he was able to overstep all other forms of authority. “He said, 'Listen to me before you listen to your father,' and when I think back on that, it blows me away.”

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