MTA Alumni Send Letter Requesting RIETS Revoke Ordination From Former Faculty Accused of Abuse
A group of alumni of YU’s Marsha Stern Talmudical Academy (MTA) sent a letter to the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS) leadership and its Board of Trustees Sunday, requesting the immediate revocation of semikha [rabbinic ordination] for Macy Gordon and George Finkelstein, former MTA faculty members accused of committing “egregious acts of abuse” against students between the 1960s and 1990s.
“The allegations paint a devastating pattern of betrayal, harm, and exploitation,” the letter states. “While one of these individuals [Gordon] is deceased and the other resides abroad beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement, their actions—and the institution’s silence—cast a shadow over the moral and ethical foundation upon which this rabbinic body stands.”
“The Seminary’s history in handling these matters further deepens the pain of survivors and raises critical concerns about accountability,” it adds.
YU Survivors 4 Justice (YUSJ), the organization that sent the letter, is a volunteer-led advocacy group representing survivors who suffered alleged abuse by administrators, faculty and staff of YU and its affiliates, particularly MTA. The allegations against Gordon and Finkelstein were corroborated by “multiple sources,” according to YUSJ, including findings from a Forward investigation conducted between 2012 and 2013.
The allegations against Gordon and Finkelstein are also part of a lawsuit filed in 2019 by over 40 former students, which alleges negligence on the part of YU in addressing and preventing the abuse. In April 2024, a New York County Supreme Court judge denied YU’s motion to dismiss the case, allowing it to proceed. The case remains ongoing, although 11 of the plaintiffs have already settled with the university.
The letter also called for the full release of a report by the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, an internal investigation commissioned by YU in 2013 to examine allegations of abuse within its institution. The report, which was made public, and found that instances of sexual and physical abuse had occurred at MTA, “remains incomplete and inaccessible to the survivors and the public,” according to the letter. The report did not include details of specific interviews carried out by investigators, information critical to understanding the depth of institutional failures, according to YUSJ.
The letter also highlighted two decisions made by YU that the group says further exacerbated survivors’ pain. The first occurred in 2002, when RIETS reportedly accepted a $250,000 gift to establish a scholarship in the name of Gordon, a former MTA faculty member. This decision — announced by then-President Norman Lamm in a YU publication — came two decades after a student and his father reported Gordon’s alleged “vicious and sadistic” abuse to a senior university administrator, according to the lawsuit’s complaint.
Additionally, MTA honored Finkelstein, the former MTA principal, at fundraising dinners in 1985 and 1995, even after complaints were issued from students and parents regarding his alleged abuse. YU publicized these events through advertisements in the New York Jewish Week and issued press releases celebrating the dinners and Finkelstein, further amplifying the survivors’ and their families’ pain.
A representative of RIETS declined to comment on whether the seminary has a procedure for revoking ordination or whether it has ever been done so before, on whether the seminary has the ability to release the complete Sullivan & Cromwell report, on whether the seminary ever formally retracted its decision to name a scholarship after Gordon and to provide a response to the letter. A YU spokesperson told The Commentator that “we do not comment on legal matters.”
The letter was sent exactly one week before YU’s Centennial Hanukkah Dinner and follows a recent opinion article in The Commentator written by Mordechai I. Twersky (MTA ‘81, YC ‘85), the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, who criticized YU for not acknowledging the allegations.
“President Ari Berman will take the stage at the centennial celebration and extol YU’s legacy of ‘integrity,’” Twersky wrote. “He will wrap the institution around the Israeli flag and the plight of the Israeli hostages. But he won’t acknowledge that YU has cravenly denied justice to more than 50 former students who were sexually abused under its watch by administrators, faculty and staff — many raped and sodomized repeatedly by teachers who were ordained rabbis — as far back as the 1960’s — and abandoned ever since.”
“YU’s centennial is an opportunity for reflection and redirection,” Twersky continued. “Rather than burying the past, the university should confront it head-on. Only then can it truly honor its mission and ensure that its next century is built not on avoidance but on justice and healing.”
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Photo Caption: Yeshiva University Zysman Hall
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons
