The More Things Change

A guest post by Baruch Pelta:

It is, if I understand correctly, about two weeks since the information we have now regarding one Leib Tropper was released. By now, much of the J-blogosphere has commented on Troppergate. Let's forget about EJF for a moment (R' Adlerstein, as usual, has a very good post, and kol hakavod to him and R' Eidensohn for speaking up on this issue directly with the braveness of attaching their real names to their critiques) and focus on Tropper's status in the haredi world. I would like to add my two cents, as speculative as they may be:
He’s gonna get off scot-free and perhaps be even better off than he was before.
Leib Tropper is still credited as the Rosh Yeshiva of Kol Yaakov (where R’ Nisson Wolpin’s brother is Mashgiach Ruchani) and apparently is still the head of the kiruv organization, "Horizons." Rabbis continue to teach at Kol Yaakov and give the impression that their rosh yeshiva a great man who along with his enablers is qualified to disseminate authentic Judaism. Since Tropper has stepped down from his role at Eternal Jewish Family, R’ Reuven Feinstein has now said he is going to take a more active role in said organization. Tropper’s organization thus is given more legitimacy than it did before.
I recently had a discussion with a friend about this scandal. He told me he’d wait to see what gedolim say, and I assume that this is what the community is going to do as well. R’ Reuven Feinstein seems to have made his position clear and I think, based on what we have seen in the past secular calendar year, others will follow: through their silence, it will be intimated that Tropper can remain in his position as a great teacher of Torah; people will then speculate and twist their thumbs as to why this is so, but the end result will be a keeping of the status quo.
This event, like the Isaac Hersh saga (I won't get into that right now), may fade from the blogs as new controversies wax and wane and Tropper interprets verses. The legitimization of Leib Tropper as a Rosh Yeshiva while R’ Natan Slifkin was banned from teaching Torah for saying things like Chazal can be wrong about science (I’m paraphrasing R’ Wachtfogel)…is disgusting and shows that at the end of the day, moral standards are not as high in some circles as their apologists claim them to be. As a mentor recently noted to me, the phrase kol hapasul bemumo pasul truly applies here.