Zionist movement umbrella ousts rabbi at the center of harassment dispute
Courtesy of jta
(JTA) — The World Confederation of United Zionists, one of several groupings within the World Zionist Organization, let go of its secretary-general, American-born Rabbi Dov Lipman, citing his dispute with two women who say he sexually harassed them.
Haaretz, which first broke the story of the harassment allegations, reported Monday that the confederation’s chairman, David Yaari, notified the World Zionist Organization of Lipman’s departure last month after the allegations were made public.
“Given the grave allegations against former MK Dov Lipman, it was decided to part ways in order to focus on CUZ’s vital work within the global Zionist forum,” Yarri told Haaretz in a statement.
Lipman, who is from the Washington, D.C., area, is a former Knesset member from the Yesh Atid party.
He denied to Haaretz that he had been fired, saying he had left of his own accord to devote more time to helping new immigrants to Israel settle and assimilate, the work he is best known for.
Lipman has denied the harassment allegations, which first arose on a private Facebook page. He has sued the two women making the accusations, and they have countersued.
The two women, like Lipman, are members of the Modern Orthodox community in Beth Shemesh, a city near Jerusalem. They said the harassment occurred when they and Lipman were part of a movement to push back against haredi Orthodox harassment of Modern Orthodox women and girls in the city over modesty and other perceived religious infractions
The post Zionist movement umbrella ousts rabbi at the center of harassment dispute appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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
