Rabbi Pinchas Lipner filed a $10 million lawsuit on Monday against the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation, the Jewish Community Endowment Fund and Richard Goldman, alleging the philanthropist and former federation president defamed him in a 10-year-old interview.
Lipner, founder and dean of San Francisco’s Hebrew Academy, claims derogatory statements made by Goldman in the 1992 interview have tarnished both his and the school’s reputation, caused him emotional distress and damaged the school’s ability to elicit funds.
Sam Salkin, the federation’s CEO, described the suit — filed in San Francisco Superior Court — as baseless and said he will not seek a settlement.
“There’s nothing to settle,” he said. “The complaint has no merit. The Jewish Community Federation, its endowment fund and Mr. Richard Goldman have not either libeled or defamed Hebrew Academy or its dean, Pinchas Lipner.”
Both Lipner and Goldman declined to comment on the matter.
The 1992 interview was one in a series of “oral histories” funded by the federation and undertaken by the Regional Oral History Office of U.C. Berkeley’s Bancroft Library. Interviewer Eleanor Glaser has spoken to about 14 former federation presidents or executives in the past decade.
Forty pages into the roughly 100-page interview, Glaser asked Goldman, the federation’s president from 1981-82, about Hebrew Academy. His page-and-a-half of discourse on the matter includes the following statements:
*”I think [Rabbi] Lipner is a person who doesn’t deserve respect for the way he conducts his affairs…I don’t think he is an honorable man.”
*”Anyone who would take children away from a school and use them to protest by sitting in at the Federation offices is someone who doesn’t appeal to me.”
*”I remember a couple of occasions visiting the Hebrew Academy. When he would walk into the room, the children would stand at attention as if it were the Fuhrer walking in.”
*”I think he is self-serving and an embarrassment. He was run out of other communities before he got here. We are too tolerant of him.”
*”I’m not sure, but I think he had been in Cleveland before he came here. Somebody checked the record and found that community did not tolerate him.”
Very few copies of the Goldman interview exist; the S.F.-based JCF owns one, as does the Bancroft Library. Goldman has several, and Glaser and former JCF Executive Director Rabbi Brian Lurie each own one.
Lipner’s lawyer, Paul Kleven, said he has no idea how many people have read the interview, but “they are available in libraries, people see them, and that causes damage to a reputation.”
Richard Candida-Smith, the Regional Oral History Office’s director, said the division hopes to eventually post the JCF interviews online, but Salkin said the JCF would “take steps” to make sure the interviews don’t find their way onto the Web.
Kleven said some of Goldman’s comments were statements of fact the federation knew to be false and allowed to be printed and reprinted. Lipner has never behaved like Adolf Hitler or taken children out of school to protest the JCF, and he has visited Cleveland only to attend a wedding, the lawsuit states.
Salkin, however, said all of Goldman’s statements are opinions, and therefore not actionable under California libel law. What’s more, another former JCF executive director, Lou Weintraub, states in his oral history interview that Lipner did indeed bring in schoolchildren to picket the JCF in the early 1970s.
Salkin added that there is only a one-year statute of limitations for libel, which has expired. Since Lipner is a public figure, he would additionally have to prove malice on the part of Goldman and the federation, Salkin said.
Ted Ting, an Oakland commercial litigation and media law specialist, affirmed that the statute of limitations for defamation is also only one year.
Kleven said Lipner only found out about the interview just under a year ago and could not “with reasonable diligence” have discovered it any sooner. The suit, which was filed just before Super Sunday, while most of the JCF’s leadership in Philadelphia for the United Jewish Communities’ General Assembly, had to be submitted now because Lipner’s one-year window is running out, Kleven added.
Salkin questioned why the interview’s publisher, the Regional Oral History Office, was not named in the lawsuit, claiming the federation did not control the interview and is not liable under state law. Kleven said he could not discuss why the Bancroft Library division was not named, though it “may be brought in down the line.”
Kleven also refused to disclose whether Hebrew Academy’s board had approved the suit, or if Lipner initiated it on his own.
Goldman’s statements have caused general contributions to Hebrew Academy to go down, according to Kleven, who said he will establish a connection “in the lawsuit.”
Hebrew Academy, which was founded in 1969, was allocated $243,000 by the federation this year, in addition to up to $65,000 in scholarship funds. The school did not claim all of the available scholarship funds.
Since 1981, the federation has allocated $6,328,034 to Hebrew Academy in addition to $1 million from the JCEF toward a new building. The amount made available to Hebrew Academy this year — $308,081 — is the lowest since 1997-98, but is more than in six of the previous 10 years since Goldman’s interview.
JCF allocations are down in general this year, and allocations to all day schools except those in the south Peninsula region have been reduced, said Andrea Dapper, the JCF’s senior planning analyst.
“Here’s someone alleging we libeled him. Over its life, the JCF has been the single largest financial supporter of Hebrew Academy. We provided Hebrew Academy with over $1 million to build its new building,” said Salkin.
“On a per capita basis, it has received the largest support of any Jewish day school in the area.”
The school currently boasts roughly 160 students according to a school secretary. By contrast, between 300 and 400 attended in the early 1990s, meaning that “on a per capita basis, funding is probably at an all-time high” according to Salkin.
Lurie, the executive director of the federation from 1974 to 1991, said Goldman has never attempted to alter Hebrew Academy’s allocation, which was at a high level during and after his presidency.
“Richard Goldman was never in favor of allocations to day schools. But if you look at his record, even during the time of his presidency, he was a substantial donor and he never used undue influence at this time [to decrease day school funding]. Whether he could have or not, he never did,” said Lurie.
“If the guy doesn’t do it when he’s sitting in the most important seat, now when he’s sort of a back-bencher, I can’t imagine him doing it.”
Lipner sued the JCF once before, in the early 1970s. Angered by his picketing of its offices in hopes of garnering more than his agreed-upon allocation, the federation cut Hebrew Academy off financially. The school was still listed as a beneficiary agency in JCF campaign literature, however. The case was settled out of court.
Salkin said he is unsure how the lawsuit will affect future allocations to Hebrew Academy, but he is certain it has poisoned the institutions’ relationship.
“This is not a way collaborative, cooperating institutions work together in the Jewish community,” he said. “I’m very disappointed in Rabbi Lipner. He should know better.”