When Rabbi Steven Pruzansky released a column on his personal blog at the end of March, he claimed that the solution to college campus rape culture is abstinence. If more women abstained from sex, he wrote, as his Judaism warrants, then campus rape culture will magically vanish.
I am grateful to have seen so many Orthodox Jews from different speak out against the victim-blaming that this arguments perpetuates. However, Pruzansky isn’t the only problem — so are those rushing to his defense. And the problem is equally those who choose to defend his right to free speech irrespective of who his statements hurt, as many have already pointed out. In response, the Modern Orthodox Jewish community has taken important steps to amplify the voices of women who are affected (and offended) by Pruzansky’s misogyny and apologia of rape culture on university campuses.
It’s easy to write of people like him as speaking for a minority, voicing an opinion outside the fold — but this disregards the effect that Pruzansky has on the people who do follow him. Instead, what Pruzansky and his defenders fail to realize is that they’re systemic of a much larger problem: They are failing as rabbis. Their astounding lack of empathy and digging their heels into the ground over being called out for their misogyny all point to the same thing: The problem lies not just within Pruzansky himself, but within the position of power that the rabbinate holds right now.
The Rabbinical Council of America and Pruzansky are both the failures themselves and the casualties of a larger failure that plagues them. They are victims of a rabbinate that has grown increasingly out of touch with the world around it. They opine from above without any sense of understanding that the world doesn’t operate on the same premises that they seem to. And it is only now that we realize exactly how out of touch these revered rabbinic leaders have become.
When a rabbi tells the people who are supposed to look up to him as a rabbinic and pastoral leader that the entire framework of their lives is wrong, the problem becomes apparent: The leadership is bad. It needs to change. Arguing for abstinence as a solution to rape culture on postsecondary campuses, and then refusing to yield when critiqued, is not a sign of being resolute. It is a sign of being obstinate to the lived realities of those you are supposed to guide.
It becomes clear, then, that the problem lies not with reality, but with the fiction that these rabbis — chief among them Steven Pruzansky — have constructed for themselves. When our leaders rely solely on fiction, then the time has come to change the leadership.
Pruzansky is not the only source of this fiction. In a culture that champions abstinence until marriage, and hides away (at worst) or glosses over (perhaps at best) any discussions of sexuality and sexual assault before adolescents reach campus, it’s clear the problem is deep-seated and systemic in a way that extends beyond just Pruzansky. When we refuse to arm the next generation with the information and the resources that they need to protect themselves, then we end up with leaders like Pruzansky, who are catastrophically out of touch with the world around them.
When the rabbinate elevates itself to a level high enough such that they think the solution to college campus problems is arguing that reality needs to change, then we need to remove the rabbinate from their high pedestal. In their place, we need to elevate the voices of those who have been left out of the conversation.
It is high time that the Orthodox rabbinate begin to confront reality, not just invented fictions. To do that, however, it must realize that those within its echelons are not the sole arbiters of right and wrong, nor are they the ones who must live through the narratives that they superimpose over reality. This requires a humility on their part that they don’t yet possess — an extreme humility to respond to the realities of the world around them, not to continue espousing invented narratives that have no bearing on reality and serve only to further hurt those who need support.
Numerous Jewish women have begun to speak out against Pruzansky. We must continue to elevate their voices in the conversation in the hopes that, one day, the rabbinate will listen.
Amram Altzman is a student at List College.
