NEW JERSEY
New Jersey Jewish Standard
Larry Yudelson
Published: 12 July 2013
The head of the Yeshiva University High School for Boys is under fire for hosting a convicted child molester at his Teaneck synagogue and home as recently as February, even as the high school and the parent university was sued this week for $380 million for damages growing out of alleged sexual abuse at the high school three decades ago.
Rabbi Baruch Lanner is the former New Jersey director of the Orthodox NCSY youth group. In 2000, a Jewish Week report documenting his long history of emotional and sexual abuse finally ended his career at the Orthodox Union; in 2002 he was convicted of molesting two girls at the Hillel Yeshiva High School in Deal. On Purim this year, Lanner was a guest at the home of Rabbi Michael Taubes, who is both the rosh yeshiva of the YU high school (or MTA, as it generally is called) and the spiritual leader of Congregation Zichron Mordechai in Teaneck.
Lanner was paroled in 2008 and has been seen at Zichron Mordechai since then.
David Cheifetz of Teaneck raised the issue publicly on June 30 in an address to the annual conference of the Rabbinical Council of America.
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