While the Integral blogosphere, including Ken Wilber, has been quiet on the Gafni scandal in the last two weeks, the Jewish press and community of bloggers have been pursuing past and current allegations, which have become extraordinarily alarming. Jewish leaders in Israel and in the United States have been condemnatory of Rabbi Mordechai Gafni [aka, Marc Gafni] after a quarter of a century during which many of them had excused or forgiven him, brushing aside enflamed behavior and claims by girls or women of being abused.Hokai D. Sobol of Hokai’s blogue is the most recent of blogs Blogmandu follows to post on the Gafni matter. Hokai found wisdom in Wilber’s May 15 post on Gafni, ending the first paragraph of a two paragraph entry with these words:
But Hokai’s second paragraph begins, “On the other hand…” and ends with this sentiment …I hope [Gafni will] be back with us in near future, more integrated. May merits generated through our prayers and blessings go to the people he has hurt and him equally in these most difficult times.
[His] behaviour creates serious disturbances in relationships for a long time. Trust is the key word, and that has been broken.Current Charges and Past Complaints
In early May, three women in their twenties, all of whom were members of Bayit Chadash, a prayer and study center in Jaffa, Israel, filed complaints against Rabbi Gafni with the Israeli police. Gafni – variously reported as being 44 or 46 years of age – was a founder and worked as a teacher or spiritual guide at Bayit Chadash. The woman each claimed he sexually harassed them during Torah lessons, promising each that he would marry them later in exchange for sexual access.
Some reports say that a fourth woman who was an associate of Gafni’s in Israel before he founded Bayit Chadash had also come forward to witness to abuse she had suffered. The manner of her maltreatment and whether she filed a complaint with the police is not clear. She is reported to have spoken to a Bayit Chadash investigatory committee.
Subsequently, two American woman emerged with their longstanding complaints of being abused by Gafni when they were minors and he was working as a youth leader in Florida.
Gafni admitted committing statutory rape of a fourteen-year-old girl in a 2004 interview with New York Jewish Week editor Gary Rosenblatt. Gafni was a nineteen-year-old rabbi at the time of the deed. He said of the girl, “She was 14 going on 35, and I never forced her.” But reports that Ynet news service says are unconfirmed tell the girl’s side of the story, that she was a virgin that had never seen a naked man; she psychologically shut herself down as he molested her; and she was then pressured to manually bring him to climax. Gafni was not prosecuted for the crime because by the time the interview was in print the statute of limitations had expired.
Ynetnew.com, the English-language online presence of Yedioth, Israel’s largest media company, reports regularly on developments on the Gafni scandal. Gafni had been a columnist with the organization. Their May 26 report included comments from men in authority who worked closely with Gafni in Jaffa.
“Yaakov Ner-David, who founded the Bayit Chadash community six years ago in Jaffa, said of co-founder … Gafni, “For years we supported him despite the allegations, but now we know the truth. This was a blow to many people.”The Canonist and a candidate pathology that may be Gafni’s problem.
Bayit Chadash Director Or Zohar said, “I protected Gafni and forgave him for verbally assaulting and manipulating me, because I thought to myself that although he is not perfect he does do good in this world … I noticed the problems, I sensed that a lot of dark things were taking place, but I could not even imagine the extent of what was really going on.”
Rabbi Ohad Mizrahi, director of the “Hamakom” community, worked in close contact with Gafni for several years. [He said], “The problem was not his alleged sexual addiction; it was that he preyed on women from his own community. … he was actually employing brain-washing methods...”
Steven I. Weiss's Jewish blog Canonist posted the whole of a text written by Gafni, in the form of an open letter, addressed “to my holiest of friends,” that was printed in the New York-based Jewish newspaper the Forward. The post generated comments running the gamet – from one reader saying that Gafni should seek Christ; to belief that the letter was self-involved; to belief that the sentiment was appropriate and sincere; to hope that Gafni will return to teach.
One reader, Nanne, commented with extensive quotes from Harvard psychologist Martha Stout’s 2005 book “The Sociopath Next Door: The Ruthless vs. the Rest of Us.” This is a book your B’du Reporter recently read. Indeed, Gafni fits the profile of a sociopath in all the ways that Nanne identifies. The best identifier, Stout says, is that a sociopath will appeal to people’s sympathy when caught. [In his confessional letter that was in the Forward; in getting woman to not compain about his behavior; in successfully getting Jewish authorities to look the other way and minimize in their minds the extent of his misdeeds, Gafni fits the profile.]
Too, Nanne quotes this from Stout’s book: “The intense charm of people who have no conscience, a kind of inexplicable charisma, has been observed and commented on by countless victims, and by researchers who attempt to catalog the diagnostic signs of sociopathy. : ‘He was the most charming person I ever met,’ or ‘I felt like I’d known him forever’, or ‘He had an energy about him that other people just don’t have.’”
And there’s this, “sexual seduction is only one aspect of the game. We are seduced as well by the acting skills of the sociopath. Since the scaffolding of a life without conscience is deception and illusion, intelligent sociopaths often become proficient at acting.”
And this, “In addition, we are distracted from a person’s actual behavior when he represents himself as in some way benevolent, creative, or insightful. We do not suspect people who claim to be animal lovers, we give extra leeway to those who identify as artists or intellectuals, in part because we attribute any departures from the norm to eccentricities that we, as ordinary people, could not possibly understand. Worse, our respect for people who appear to be inspired and benevolent leaders can be abused—has been abused many times—-to cataclysmic ends.”
The Sociopath to Buddhists and on the Dynamic Spiral
Dr. Stout’s work involved reconstructing the lives of victims of sociopaths, and this can have engendered some bias in judgment of sociopaths whom she deplored with bitterness. But from knowledge gained in her profession, she gave no hope to constructing a conscience in a person born without the possibility of having one or whose early childhood was such that a conscience did not develop or thrive.
She doesn’t say this directly, but from reading her book you get the idea that having or not having a conscience is as fixed in life as a sexual orientation.
For Buddhists and Intergralists, the problem is an interesting one, in the abstract. A person without a conscience can feel no shame or know of love. He has no drive except one of feeling power, and thus an intelligent sociopath will channel himself into positions where he has power over others. His life can become a game of twisting situations to get what he wants while being gleefully aware of how easily a ‘normal’ trusting person can fall prey to being fooled or manipulated.
I think that a Buddhist can develop a troubling empathy for a conscienceless sociopath. Without 'normal' restraints and no access to feelings of love, What else could an intelligent sociopath do? We see it all the time: an unfettered, unrestrained, undeterred ego feeds on the world. That's its job -- just as a vulture naturally eats carrion, a big black cloud naturally drops rain, and a big purple dinosaur naturally dances with little children. A sociopath has no counteracting agent to ego enlargement.
In the Buddhist canon, there is the story of Angulimala, a mass murderer who made a necklace from the fingers of the people he killed. Buddha is supposed to have used his considerable powers of love and reason to reform Angulimala who we are to believe changed his ways and became a disciple of the Buddha.
Of course, we don’t hear the story from Angulimala’s perspective, which, based on current understanding of sociopaths might lead us to think Angulimala merely seduced the Buddha into believing he was reformed, all the while checking out Buddha’s hand for a future charm to add to his necklace.
Dabrowski, whose work meshes with the Dynamic Spiral, considered criminal psychopaths to be at the lowest layer of his Level 1 – persons who are ‘integrated’ in their moral perspective. That is, their moral perspective is hardened at the lowest of levels.
Wilber’s Curious Perspective
It is not the purpose of this post to diagnose Gafni, but it is appropriate to bring into question the overcautious response of Wilber regarding Gafni’s behavior.
While compassion is a pinnacle element of Buddhism and Integralism, it is clearly misplaced when a serial abuser is inadequately confronted and where the complaints of the abused continue to be treated lightly. Wilber wrote in his May 15 blog post, regarding response to the allegations against Gafni, “This has caused something of a feeding frenzy for the mean green meme, which is understandable but I believe inexcusable. Frankly, some of these have reached pathetic portions.”
It seems from what is now widely known -- and from what Wilber must have known mid-May had he been unblinkered by friendship for Gafni -- that the psychological troubles of the now-former Rabbi are severe, whatever they are. Characterizing those who express extreme anger at Gafni as piranha is bizarre, under the circumstances.
Wilber’s prognosis for Gafni seems wildly optimistic and lacking in any obligation to protect those who look to him for wisdom and leadership. Wilber wrote that Gafni should not teach “at this time.” And he wrote that Gafni should continue writing.
It would seem more reasonable not to hold out hope to Gafni that he should continue teaching. It is clear that Gafni needs to find some other line of work.
In addition, it certainly calls into question Wilber’s ability to teach and understand others. In his online presence, Wilber is exhibiting narcissism and great pleasure with his status as a quasi-“cult leader.” It certainly seems that Wilber has lost ‘the common touch’ and any empathy with the suffering horde that nobody knows. Wilber should, perhaps, examine himself to see if he has been carried away by status and attention such that his interests are now exclusively with what he imagines are the elite.
