NEW YORK
The Awareness Center
A Law Suit Filed Against Mordechai Tendler, Kehillat New Hempsted, and Rav Aron Jofen Community Synagogue on December 20, 2005.
This case started during the question-and-answer session of a Makor forum on rabbinic abuse, (back in December, 2003) several female health-care professionals in the audience spoke with passion and frustration about a well-known rabbi in their local community whose affairs with women in his office, they said, have gone on for years.
The speakers said they felt stymied as to how to take action against the unnamed rabbi, who is highly respected, and help the women involved, who are too embarrassed to speak out.
Several sources have informed the Forward newspaper that a number of women have told friends and Jewish communal figures that Rabbi Mordechai Tendler, who is married with eight children, had propositioned them while serving in his role as either rabbinic counselor or religious arbiter."Rabbi Tendler denies all of the allegations that are being made in their entirety," the spokesman wrote in a statement sent to the Forward. "No misconduct was committed by him."