A Legacy Overshadowed: Yeshiva University’s Centennial Celebration Cannot Ignore Decades of Injustice

As Yeshiva University (YU) prepares to celebrate the centennial of its Hanukkah dinner on Dec. 15, I find myself reflecting on a different kind of anniversary — one marked by decades of silence, pain and a longing for justice. I am a former student of YU’s Marsha Stern Talmudical Academy, and I am one of the many survivors of sexual abuse that occurred within its walls.

In 2012, during a similar YU event, then-White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew addressed these issues directly. He condemned the “despicable” acts of abuse that had come to light and urged the university to address them with integrity and transparency. More than a decade later, his words remain tragically unheeded.

As The Commentator has reported, a judge last spring dismissed YU’s motion to throw out our landmark abuse case — one of the largest in New York State. It also reported that YU has settled only a handful of more than 50 cases. These settlements reflect not a commitment to justice but an effort to quietly resolve cases while avoiding accountability.

Meanwhile, critical witnesses — former staff, board members, teachers and alumni — either continue to remain silent or die each year, taking with them crucial testimony that could illuminate the truth. Tragically, one survivor in our group died without seeing justice served, underscoring the cost of these delays.

Adding to the frustration is YU’s refusal to release all of the findings of its internal investigation conducted by the prominent law firm Sullivan & Cromwell in 2013. This report, which survivors believe could reveal the depth of institutional failure and neglect, has remained hidden from public view. Adding insult to injury, YU failed to meet its court-mandated discovery deadline in August, further delaying accountability and justice.

But a breakthrough may be at hand.

At least one unnamed press organization is said to be considering filing a formal request to the judge in the case to unseal the explosive depositions of former staff member Rabbi Yosef Blau and former high school secretary Naomi Gershkowitz-Lipnick earlier this year, which could have a seismic impact on the case and may send tremors throughout the YU community. I urge The Commentator to consider joining this effort.

The judge in an unrelated but eerily similar Baruch Lanner-NCSY sexual abuse case recently ordered the Orthodox Union to release its own internal investigative report, according to court documents. With YU facing a new discovery deadline in January, we survivors — who have been denied, mocked and marginalized by YU for decades — eagerly await this moment of truth and will be watching closely.

Yeshiva University’s breaches are not just legal oversights — they are moral betrayals that cut to the heart of the institution’s values.

President Ari Berman will take the stage at the centennial celebration and extol YU’s legacy of “integrity.” 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.

But integrity demands action. It requires acknowledging past mistakes, apologizing to those harmed and taking concrete steps to ensure such abuses never happen again. Without these actions, YU’s centennial risks being remembered not for its grandeur but for its glaring omissions.

At this moment, attendees and honorees at YU’s centennial dinner should reflect on Jack Lew’s words from 2012: “The alleged behavior is despicable and cannot be tolerated in any place, at any time, and the response must transcend the confines of religious teaching,” Lew told the capacity crowd of YU trustees and supporters at the Waldorf Astoria. “Leaders of this and every educational institution have a sacred responsibility to protect children from any action that might endanger or exploit them.”

Survivors of abuse are not nameless statistics or inconvenient footnotes in YU’s history; they are individuals whose lives were irrevocably changed by the institution’s failures. They deserve more than quiet settlements and hidden reports — they deserve transparency, accountability and an acknowledgment of their pain.

YU’s centennial is an opportunity for reflection and redirection. 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.

The choice is clear: Celebrate without accountability — or honor the past by addressing it. Survivors — and history — are watching.

Mordechai I. Twersky (MTA ’81, YC ’85) is a journalist, writer and advocate for survivors of institutional abuse.

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Photo Caption: A young Mordechai Twersky

Photo Credit: Mordechai Twersky