Addressing Abuse in US Gymnastics—and The Reform Movement

 This week, the 2024 Summer Olympics have begun, and one of the flagship events, gymnastics, drew viewers on the first day of competition. I can’t wait to keep watch Simone Biles and the other gymnasts take the floor (and the beam, vault, and bars!). I will be watching both as a fan and as someone whose work includes ensuring that women are free from sexual harassment and abuse.

These have been challenging years for American gymnasts and U.S.A. Gymnastics, the organization overseeing gymnastics in the United States. The sexual abuse scandal that rocked the gymnastics world a decade ago led to significant changes, including sending former team doctor Larry Nassar to jail for what is effectively a life sentence. New leaders have been appointed at U.S.A. Gymnastics, including a board seat assigned to an abuse survivor. Far-reaching changes have been made to training practices. The U.S. Center for SafeSport, an independent authority directed by Congress to prevent and respond to all forms of abuse and misconduct within the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Movement, has been operational since 2017.

On the surface, it seems that a terrible problem has been solved. But that is why we must always look beneath the surface! We do not stop our examination with the פְּשָׁט‎ (peshat, surface) review; we keep going and look for the deeper answers.

When we do this, we see that progress has been made, but the problem is far from being resolved. Here’s how three-time Olympic gymnast Dominique Dawes put it recently: “I think there’s a perception that there’s a culture change. For this generation that’s on the floor competing, I think it’s healthier for them. But we don’t know what’s happening for the younger generations because they still don’t have a voice.”  She continued, “People both simultaneously recognize that the culture of sport and the awareness around these issues is significantly different from the way it was 10 years ago [and] at the same time, athletes are not necessarily believing that the [U.S. Center for SafeSport] can quickly and effectively handle their cases.”

Dawes is exactly right to focus on younger gymnasts. The progress that has been made has not yet been seen at the lower competition levels, where the competitors have the least power.

The challenge of driving change deep into an established system is on my mind not only because of the upcoming Olympics. The Women’s Rabbinic Network (WRN), the organization of Reform female, nonbinary, and genderfluid rabbis that I have the honor of serving, is advocating for the entire Reform Movement—and the larger Jewish community—to deepen our work on issues of sexual harassment and abuse.

What would a deeper approach mean in our case? Between November 2021 and February 2022, three of the Reform Movement’s key institutions commissioned and published detailed studies by outside experts examining their organizational history with sexual harassment and abuse. These reports—from the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ, the congregational arm of the Movement), the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR, the rabbinic arm of the Movement), and Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR, the Movement’s seminary)—were explicit about the unacceptable treatment of many female rabbis and rabbinic students. URJ, CCAR, and HUC-JIR have all taken significant steps to recognize and expose their failures and to guard against similar actions in the future. Progress has been made.

From one perspective, the surface-level view, the problem of sexual harassment and abuse in the Reform Movement has been addressed. The truth is that the real work has only just begun.

That work needs to take place in the workplaces of the hundreds of synagogues that belong to the URJ, synagogues led by rabbis who are members of the CCAR and staffed by other clergy, educators, and staff trained by HUC-JIR. This is where the rubber meets the road.

To its credit, the URJ has been encouraging its member congregations to adopt formal Codes of Ethics, which provide a set of rules for synagogue workplaces and a clear avenue for victims to effectively raise their concerns. Over 100 congregations have done so. This is both encouraging—100 is a meaningful number of congregations—and disappointing, as it means that some seven hundred congregations, including many of the largest, have not yet adopted a Code of Ethics. Adopting a Code of Ethics does not, by itself, solve problems, nor does the absence of a formal Code of Ethics mean that a congregation has sexual harassment or abuse issues. But it is a helpful yardstick for assessing the commitment of individual congregations to take these issues seriously.

As the Paris Olympics begin, we celebrate progress on combating sexual harassment and abuse on the elite level of gymnastics and continue to raise concerns about the much larger group of gymnasts who compete at many other levels. In that same spirit, WRN commends URJ, CCAR, and HUC-JIR for taking the issue of sexual harassment and abuse seriously; we simultaneously recommit ourselves to doing everything we can to bring that level of honesty and seriousness to the congregations and other organizations that are home to the vast majority of Jewish workplaces.