In an unusual move, a group of influential Orthodox Jewish leaders wrote a letter urging American rabbis to speak during this year’s High Holidays on the importance of ethical living, in response to some recent high-profile arrests of Jews, including two New Jersey rabbis in July.
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In the Sept. 3 letter sent to about 2,000 rabbis nationwide, the leaders of Yeshiva University, the Orthodox Union and the Rabbinical Council of America cited "the recent scenes of religious Jews being led off in handcuffs, charged with corruption, money laundering, and even organ trafficking.”
During the High Holidays, which began Sept. 18 with Rosh Hashana and end Monday on Yom Kippur, Jews are supposed to take stock of their lives, and rabbis’ sermons these days can touch on everything from personal religious observance to social issues, and from personal morality to international relations.
The letter, which several Orthodox rabbis in New Jersey said they would heed, urged Jewish clergy to publicly affirm at least once during the High Holidays that the Torah forbids all stealing; that secular laws bind religious Jews; that Jews should lead efforts to promote honesty in society; and that Jews must sacrifice financially rather than bring shame to God or Jewish law.
"This is not a time for splitting hairs over possible dissenting views,” reads the letter, signed by six leading Orthodox rabbis. "(W)e must make the ethical demands of the Torah and the day clear in the most public of ways. We strongly urge you to join with us and loudly declare, to our own communities and to the world, that we, representing Torah, will not tolerate any but the highest standards of ethics.”
The letter referred indirectly to money-laundering charges against Rabbi Ben Haim of Congregation of Ohel Yaacob and Rabbi Edmund Nahum of the Synagogue of Deal, N.J., and Rabbi Saul Kassin from Brooklyn, and organ-trafficking charges against a Jew from Brooklyn. Those arrests were part of a massive sting operation that also led to the arrest of politicians on corruption charges. The letter seemed to hint at crimes of Bernie Madoff, whose fraudulent investment company cost thousands of people billions of dollars.
