The chief rabbi of France, under pressure to resign since he admitted plagiarizing parts of a book on Jewish meditations, acknowledged significant moral errors in a radio interview Tuesday night, but said he would not step down, reports The New York Times.
Rabbi Gilles Bernheim said that although he had made mistakes, “I have not committed fault in the exercise of my functions” as France’s chief rabbi, a post he has filled since 2009. “To resign,” he said on Radio Shalom, “would be an act of vanity and desertion.”
Nonetheless, he is still expected to face pressure to resign over the plagiarism and over lying about his academic achievements.
The plagiarism concerns his 2011 book, “Forty Jewish Meditations.” In March, an Internet investigation revealed similarities between that work and an interview with the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard in a 1996 book, “Questioning Judaism,” by Elizabeth Weber. Rabbi Bernheim at first suggested that Mr. Lyotard had essentially plagiarized from him, but then recanted. Another Web site then suggested that the rabbi had also used fragments of other books, by authors like Elie Wiesel and Jean-Marie Domenach, in the same work.
At first, he denied the allegations forcefully. But last week, he conceded the error, blaming inadequate oversight of a student who did some of the writing, a common practice in France.
Read more of this report from The New York Times.