Meir Pogrow is but the latest in a long list of charismatic rabbis
and Jewish educators who fell from grace when the world finally learned how
they manipulated students emotionally in order to take advantage of them
sexually—a list that includes Baruch Lanner, Motti Elon, Marc Gafni, and
others.
Obtaining sexual favors certainly ranks as one of the worst
misuses of charisma, but it is not the only misuse. In 2006,
Paul Shaviv first posted the draft (in a series
of comments on a post
by Gil Student, later posted in full on several blogs; now in
book form) of an essay profiling “Pied
Piper” educators.
Among the dangers he points out are:
- A charismatic teacher will
deeply affect and influence some students, but will almost always leave a trail
of emotional wreckage in his/her wake.
- The emotional dependency and
entanglement between teacher and student leads to boundaries being crossed.
- The teacher becomes party to
knowledge about students and their families that reinforces the teacher’s view
that they are the only teachers who ‘really’ are reaching the students. The
teacher, however, is neither a trained counselor nor a social worker. That knowledge
becomes power.
- A really charismatic teacher can end
up running a ‘school within a school’.
- The teacher will often employ
techniques (and texts) which take students to the extremes of emotion or logic,
and will then triumphantly show them how they are holding they key to
resolution (‘At this moment, you have agreed that life has no meaning -- but
here is the answer’).
- The moment [the students] realize
that they are not [protégés] (sometimes when the teacher ‘moves on to the
next’), deep emotions come into play.
- Many charismatic teachers will
lavish attention on a student or group of students as long as the student(s) do
things the teacher’s way, or accept every piece of advice or ‘philosophy’ or
Torah uncritically. The moment the student shows independence or objectivity,
they are dropped.
- As soon as they are disillusioned or
dropped, they are written out of the teacher’s story. Often such students, very
hurt, leave the school.
Perhaps the most fundamental point in Shaviv’s critique is: “The problem is that at core, these
are not educational relationships.” Charisma in general is a deeply
problematic and risky trait in a teacher of Torah, as, by definition, the
student is attracted more to the charm and personality of the teacher than to
the material that is being taught.
The unfortunate reality is that each of the offenders
mentioned above used deeply problematic methods long before there was any
general awareness of the sexual aspect of their predations. This point was
articulated well by Shayna
Goldberg:
This is the real issue that has
plagued my mind for so long. The fact that this man was never, ever fit to be
an educator. The fact that knowing all the Torah in the world does not on its
own make you trustworthy enough to be given a classroom’s worth of young,
impressionable souls. The fact that long before anyone suspected inappropriate
sexual behavior, it was glaringly clear that this person employed all kinds of
unhealthy teaching methods in order to cultivate relationships with students.
And the fact that no one but a few innocent teenage girls seemed to notice.
She concludes:
I
hope that in the wake of this scandal, we don’t just talk about one outed, sick
educator and then move on as if everything were okay. Let us not get so
distracted by the outrageous details that we forget what was so grossly
inexcusable about his conduct as a teacher, even had he never touched anyone….
Let’s
talk about it.
Indeed, let us talk about the role of charisma in our
educational system. Let us discuss whether there is such a thing as “good” or “safe”
charisma (I am skeptical, but realize that I’m still in the minority); how a
school, parents, and/or students can learn to recognize subtle warning signs;
and—to paraphrase Rabbi Noam Stein of the Akiva School in Detroit—whether and
how young charismatic teachers can be trained to use their talents in an
educationally safe and sound manner.
There are three or four basic categories of charismatic
teacher. The first is comprised of cases where the teacher has clearly crossed
a line into psychological, physical, and/or sexual abuse, as in the cases
mentioned at the beginning of this column. The second category is one where certainly
no crime or abuse has taken place, but the techniques used by the teacher are unhealthy
and unsound.
The third category is teachers who use charisma to manipulate
students, but to positive effect. I am skeptical about the existence of this
category, but many students of Rabbi
Aharon Bina would vehemently contend that he fits this category, and that,
indeed, he changed their lives for the better by breaking them down and
building them back up. There is no doubt that R. Bina’s methods cause
considerable damage as well. Is it possible to fashion a situation in which all
such collateral damage will be eliminated? Perhaps, but I
am skeptical.
The final category is “soft charisma,” a term I first heard in
the name of Rabbi Menachem Schrader, the founding director of OU-JLIC (and thus my former boss), and which he
uses to describe the educators he seeks for his program. He explained that, as
opposed to “hard charisma,” in the case of “soft charisma,” the educator never
becomes more central to the experience than the Torah that s/he is teaching.
In 2010, in the wake of the Motti Elon scandal, Rabbi Aryeh
Klapper of the Center for Modern Torah Leadership explained why
this distinction is so crucial: the Torah develops the self. Hard charisma
effaces the students’ sense of self and replaces it with the teacher’s “self.”
The difference between soft and hard charisma is thus the difference between
developing the student’s sense of self—and distorting it.
The problem is that is it not always easy to differentiate
hard and soft charisma. Building off of R. Klapper’s essay, the
following is a preliminary taxonomy for identifying charisma and its dangerous
manifestations. It goes without saying that teachers and students, and
especially administrators and parents, must be vigilant even about “soft” forms
of charisma, lest boundaries be crossed. “Failing” one of these tests should
not automatically brand the teacher as a dangerous charismatic, but failure of
multiple tests should raise red flags.
- Charismatic energy is easily
transformed into eros, so any sort of physical contact or seclusion is a breach
that warrants dismissal for a first or (at most) second offense.
- Does the teacher seek to
persuade the student to see value in what the teacher values, or to persuade
the student to see value only in what the teacher values?
- Is the teacher replacing
the student’s friends?
- Has the student begun to
imitate the teacher’s idiosyncratic practices and mannerisms?
- Is the student able to
restate the teacher’s views in his own words and defend them without falling
back on “but my teacher said”?
- What is the ratio of
content to unmoored emotion in a teacher’s “inspirational” talks? Can the talks
or lessons be quantified in terms of thinking, textual, or interpersonal
skills, or only (or mostly) in terms of emotion and inspiration?
- How does the teacher
respond to a student who questions, challenges, or rejects his/her assertions?
- How has the student’s
relationship with his/her parents changed since s/he first came under the
teacher’s influence?
Charisma is attractive and even tempting. It sometimes
seems as though a life of virtue, or spirit, or value is immediately attainable,
but, to quote a great rabbi (who had a
great deal of soft charisma), “There are no shortcuts. Ein patentim.” Education
is a long and arduous process, and the voice of God is not in the earthquake,
the great gust, or the fire, but in the still, small voice.
