Episode 34 - Why Do Rabbis Love Protecting Convicted Predator Akiva Roth?

Akiva Roth, son of Conservative bigwig Joel Roth, was accused in 1996 of sexually abusing a number of boys at one of their homes during a Bar Mitzvah lesson. He later pleaded to a lesser charge and managed to avoid jail time or sex offender registry. According to a report by the Forward, Rabbi Chaim Rogoff, a friend of Akiva's father and rabbi of the East Brunswick Jewish Center where Roth worked, made sure that the community knew as little as possible about Roth's arrest and conviction. The article describes Rogoff threatening a child, who himself alleges that Roth was sexually inappropriate with him, into silence about Roth. No doubt Rogoff expended much effort ensuring the rest of the community followed suit.

Following his departure from EBJC and Solomon Schechter after his conviction, Roth taught at JTS for a number of years, worked at Hillel, and a few other places before securing a job at Yeshiva University. After the Forward published an article about his arrest and conviction, however, he was fired. This led to an uproar in the community which played out in the pages of the Jewish Standard. Roth was initially banned from a number of shuls in Englewood where he was living, but after a letter by the community in the Standard, and a program instituted by Rabbi Shmuel Goldin, Roth was allowed back.

Goldin himself wrote a letter in the Standard, as did Akiva Roth himself, decrying the way the community was treating him. Roth, EBJC, and Rogoff are now defendants in a lawsuit filed by another alleged victim who filed suit in 2021 under the NJ Child Victims Act. What's notable about this case are the lengths to which non-Charedi rabbis went in public to protect Roth and guilt and shame anyone who tried holding him accountable or protect children in the community from him. Just goes to show, no community is immune from this.

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SHOW NOTES:

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/12/nyregion/teacher-leaves-yeshiva-amid-abuse-scandal.html

https://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/character-assassination/

https://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/repentance-and-reintegration-a-communitys-response/

https://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/reintegration-and-repentance-a-personal-perspective/