Source: Los Angeles Times
On December 7, 2000, the Los Angeles Times reported that "this week's suspension of Reform Judaism's central seminary leader for alleged sexual misconduct highlighted the Reform movement's crackdown on such behavior in recent years, officials said Wednesday. Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman resigned from his post as president of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion after the Reform rabbinate's ethics committee suspended him for two years. Although details were confidential, Zimmerman did not contest charges that he violated ethical rules to avoid 'even the appearance of sexual misconduct' and 'exploitative practices which destroy our moral integrity,' according to Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the 1.5 million-member Union of American Hebrew Congregations...In recent years, the Reform rabbinate's Central Conference of American Rabbis has introduced an elaborate system of investigating misconduct charges that includes fact-finding teams of clergy and lay members and ample opportunity for input by the accused and accuser. In addition, the movement now publicizes decisions to reprimand, censure or suspend rabbis, said Rabbi Paul Menitoff, the conference's executive vice president. In the last five years, the ethics committee has received 30 to 35 charges of ethical improprieties and found the accused rabbis culpable in about 20 of them, Menitoff said. The conference comprises 1,800 Reform rabbis. Arthur Gross-Schaefer, an ordained rabbi and professor of law and ethics at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, was an early advocate of stricter treatment of Rabbinic misconduct. He and others said they were infuriated by cases in which rabbis guilty of misconduct were simply moved to new locales--with the help of the rabbinate's placement service--without disclosing the offenses to their new congregations...Now, however, workshops on sexual misconduct are becoming more common at Reform seminaries and conferences, and more rabbis are speaking out on the topic, he said...Yoffie said the movement's greater focus on the problem reflects both a greater sensitivity to women's rights and a recognition that rabbis need to demonstrate that they will better police their own. 'The rabbinate recognized that we needed to establish trust, not only among members, but the broader movement,' Yoffie said."