Controversial New Jersey Rabbi Who Downplayed Campus Rape Draws Protests on Visit to Israel
Rabbi Steven Pruzansky speaks to women at Congregation Bnai Yeshurun in Teaneck, N.J. Image by Congregation Bnai Yeshurun
By Josh Nathan-Kazis January 26, 2017
An impending visit by controversial New Jersey rabbi Steven Pruzansky has the Israeli town of Modi’in up in arms, according to a report in Haaretz.
Pruzansky, who leads Teaneck, N.J.’s Congregation Bnai Yeshurun, has a long track record of inflammatory statements. In 2014, he was condemned by a chorus of Orthodox Jewish leaders for a blog post containing racially inflammatory statements about Palestinians. And in April of last year, there were calls for his ouster at Bnai Yeshurun after he posted another essay arguing that many campus rapes are falsely reported.
Pruzansky was invited to speak at an Orthodox synagogue called Hameginim in the town of Modi’in. According to the Haaretz report, a group of English-speaking immigrants in Modi’in are protesting his appearance.
“I’m so fed up with people like this being given a public platform,” protester Josie Glausiusz told Haaretz. “As a woman and an Israeli citizen, I feel it is important to speak out against someone with such offensive views.”
Contact Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected]
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
