Matt Tropp, is a rabbi who worked for NCSY under Rabbi Baruch Lanner. He ran cover for Lanner. He failed to report allegations of Lanner's abuse, either to law enforcement or to his NCSY superiors. He claimed in court that he was not a mandatory reporter, even though by law he was. And, after NCSY's parent body the OU issued a directive to all employees to cut off all contact with the then-disgraced Rabbi Lanner, Rabbi Tropp kept contact and admitted it in court.
Where is this rabbi now?
He works for Aish HaTorah in NYC (where he teaches outreach skills) and he speaks for the OU (here's the brochure for the OU's West Coast convention as a pdf download), and he recently shared a platform with major OU leaders, including Rabbi Herschal Schachter. He is also still listed on the OU's website as director of the New Jersey / ETZ CHAIM region of NCSY.
Why is this man still working in Jewish outreach?
UPDATE – Here's where he will be speaking Wednesday:
20 Difficult Questions & 20 Easy Answers - "The Top Twenty Questions that come up in Kiruv Encounters and How to Handle Them and the People Asking Them" …Wednesday, February 21st, sponsored by Project Inspire/Aish HaTorah. Presenter: Rabbi Moshe Zeldman, charismatic and popular teacher of Jewish Philosophy at Aish Jerusalem and international lecturer for the world-famous Discovery Seminar. The goal of the talk is to provide a starting point to get the asker to be intrigued into looking deeper, rather than comprehensive answers, and to get a person to realize that there "are" answers and that often the question is based on a misconception. At Congregation Bnai Yeshurun at 8:00 PM. For information on event or about Project Inspire - the grassroots Kiruv movement, contact Rabbi Matt Tropp…
It goes on to give his Aish HaTorah email address and phone number. [In spirit of full disclosure, Moshe Zeldman is an old friend of mine from my student activist days.]
Thursday, February 22 finds Tropp and Zeldman at another New Jersey event, oned that plays the Holocaust card:
The JEC and Aish HaTorah's Project Inspire will present a lecture by Rabbi Moshe Zeldman for the greater Elizabeth/Hillside community on Thursday evening, February 22nd, at the home of Tova and Ira Shulman, 231 Exeter Way in Hillside, beginning at 8PM. Rabbi Zeldman intends to explain a lot about the mitzva of kiruv, including its source(s), what it's all about, and why it is/should be quite an urgent issue for us -- his talk is entitled "Facing the Crisis of the Spiritual Holocaust – Kiruv: What is the Mitzva?"
Please see my recent posts on haredim and the Holocaust. Also check out this recent post on Chabad's response to the Holocaust. (For more on Chabad and the Holocaust, read this, starting at the bottom of the page and working upward.)
I also posted an image above for an earlier joint Aish HaTorah-OU kiruv training seminar that lists Tropp as a contact. Please click on the image to enlarge.
David Kelsey posted the above OU-Aish jpeg on Jewschool tonight in response to this post.
None of these links are working, and I had no idea that Matt Tropp was involved in these cases. I know Matt and his family, and I didn't know of these allegations. I would like to find out more about this case, as I have always thought of Matt as an honest and respectable man. Obviously, we have seen in the past that we don't always know people we think we do....
Posted by: YUGUY | February 20, 2007 at 09:35 PM
links out????
Posted by: ira kaufman | February 20, 2007 at 09:53 PM
YU Guy: Ask me here or off the forum about Lanner. I was there. (I don't know Tropp, but his name rings a bell.)
Posted by: Yochanan Lavie | February 20, 2007 at 10:55 PM
Yochanan, I agree that what Lanner did was horrible, He is paying for that. Beofre I include OTHER people in his sin, I would like to find out more inrofmation. I know his son, and he is a great guy, we don't damn by association.
Posted by: YUGUY | February 20, 2007 at 11:43 PM
Thanks for the link in Email. I was a bit young during this case, though.
Posted by: YUGUY | February 21, 2007 at 12:09 AM
I dislike Matt personally and because of the Lanner affair and I agree that he was an enabler.
Saying that, what do you want to do with him. Do you want him to drop dead, to be exiled in a remote island, or what? He is no longer in NCSY, no longer with children. He was never accused of being anything more then enabler. He may have done Teshuva and now he needs to make living.
If you have any current accusation against him, then by all means, expose them! Otherwise, leave him alone.
BTW, with all faults of the OU orgaization, they at least did not ban the internest when the Lanner issue was exposed. They dealt with it; could have dealt better, but for sure they are superior to anything Agudah have done with YTT, NI or other cases. So they removed Matt from NCSY and now he is in Aish, which with all faults you may find with that move, is not that bad.
Posted by: za | February 21, 2007 at 06:43 AM
za,
I don't know Rabbi Tropp, but quite it seems to me that the mistakes he made were at least partially because Lanner "made people frum." If that's the case, we are talking about someone who in effect believes the ends justifies the means.
Additionally, where is the sign that he understands what he did was wrong, and how it happened? Kiruv is an industry that is anyway much to prone towards abuse of power, the cult of personality, and an ends justifies the means approach. If Rabbi Tropp has changed, we need to know how.
As for Rabbi Tropp not being a part of NCSY, you exaggerate a bit: http://burgncsy.org/index.php/alumni/about
Could it be that NCSY itself may still harbor resentment towards those who brought the house of Lanner down? Do they feel that at least Rabbi Tropp got a raw deal? Or do they think he learned from it and suffered enough?
Is Rabbi Tropp being embraced by the kiruv community because while Aish and the OU may reject the sexual and physical abuse of Lanner, they still embrace the 'ends justifies the means' approach of Tropp?
Posted by: DK | February 21, 2007 at 11:40 AM
The Holocaust analogy is very fit...and suggests a solution to all the problems of assimilation:
Ask the gedolim what to do: And then do the exact opposite!
Posted by: Reb Yudel | February 21, 2007 at 04:15 PM
http://www.theawarenesscenter.org/lanner_baruch.html#Scrutiny
this story says it all, I believe someone like tropp cannot due teshuvah for his heinous crimes. At the very least he should be no were near children or young adults. The fact that any educational institution is willing to hire him says a lot about them. There are plenty of other ways for him to make a parnasa. If he has to flip burgers, then its the hole he dug for himself.
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