Cornell president says university ‘must do better’ after frat house rape allegations as reflected on by Rabbi Miriam Levin
The news from Cornell University feels sickeningly familiar. A young woman reports drugging and gang rape at a fraternity house. University leadership responds with customary regret, calling these university rape allegations deeply disturbing. They pledge the campus must do better. We just sent dozens of young people from our Highland Woods congregation to colleges. We bless them, praying for their intellectual awakening. We trust institutions will honor their fundamental safety. Yet, stories like this week after week puncture that sacred trust. They expose a profound moral collapse, often disguised as collegiate tradition.
Accountability Beyond “Must Do Better”
Jewish legal and moral tradition features a striking ritual from Deuteronomy: the Egla Arufa, or ceremony of the heifer. When someone was slain in an open field and the perpetrator remained unknown, elders of the nearest city performed an elaborate public ritual. They washed their hands over the heifer, declaring, “Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it.” The ancient rabbis in the Talmud immediately challenged this declaration. Could anyone truly suspect learned elders of murder? The rabbis answered that the elders confessed a communal failing. This person had passed through their jurisdiction unprotected and unassisted. Therefore, tradition understood that authority figures share moral culpability when violence occurs within community boundaries. They created or permitted conditions allowing vulnerability to turn into destruction.
Saying an institution “must do better” sounds humble. However, it too often functions as an evasion of true accountability. In the ethics of teshuvah, genuine repentance, acknowledging harm merely opens the threshold. Maimonides teaches that teshuvah demands public confession, deep remorse, and total cessation of wrongdoing. It also requires creating concrete conditions. These conditions ensure the transgression is impossible to repeat when the same temptation or scenario arises. Platitudes and task forces do not constitute teshuvah. Campuses repeatedly tolerate cultures where alcohol, insular fraternity enclaves, and predatory entitlement intersect. Leadership cannot simply mourn the aftermath as if it were an unforeseen natural disaster. Therefore, concrete action is vital.
Upholding Divine Image and Challenging Complicity
At its core, this violence denies a foundational truth from Genesis: every human is created B’tselem Elohim, in the divine image. Violating another person’s bodily sovereignty, drugging someone, and stripping their consciousness and dignity is not an adolescent lapse in judgment. It is an act of desecration. It reduces an infinite soul into an object for cruel domination. In our Torah study classes, we often discuss covenantal ethics. We understand that mutual obligation, not selfish impulse, binds us to one another. A society that commodifies pleasure at the expense of human holiness has forgotten what a covenant truly means. These university rape allegations highlight this profound societal failing.
Here in our congregation, this story prompts difficult, necessary conversations. They happen around dining tables and in youth group lounges. We cannot simply warn our daughters how to guard their drinks or instruct them on vigilance. This places an unfair burden of safety upon potential victims. Instead, we must speak directly and unsparingly to our sons about consent, honor, and the cowardice of bystander silence. In Jewish thought, standing idly by the blood of your neighbor violates a direct biblical commandment. The culture of complicity, where peers witness intoxication, drugging, or coercion and look the other way due to social loyalty, is a spiritual rot. It demands fierce eradication.
Tikkun olam, the repair of the world, often begins not in grand global projects. It starts in tearing down structures of entitled cruelty. These structures hide in plain sight within our most prestigious institutions. Universities genuinely wish to “do better.” They must demonstrate the courage of moral clarity. This means holding perpetrators accountable without fear of donor backlash. It involves dissolving organizations that harbor serial predation. Finally, it requires treating the safety and sanctity of every student as an absolute moral imperative. Words of regret remain hollow until matched by the costly, transformative work of justice. Consequently, real change demands more than just words.
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